iiTnnittiSvf^'aitiiiiiiiJ^ 111 



SUMNKR F. CLAFUN 




GATHERED 




Cbiss / £j 



IhkS 



PRESENTED BY 




M \N< 111 ^ I 1 K. N. H. 



WAYSIDE NOTES 

OF 

"LITTLE PITCHERS" 



GATHERED AMONG 

NEW HAMPSHIRE HILLS 

BY 

SUMNER F. CLAFLIN 

MANCHESTER, N. H. 



Legend — Don't ask Posterity to print 
the stuff you ocrite — print it yourself 



RUA\KORD PRINTING CO. 
CONCORD, N. H. 1907 



Gift 

(: - 



' idi4 






CONTENTS. 



Dated at Freedom, N. H. 

The Tale of a Grip 

A Ramble iu Venuout 

Vermont Ramble Coutiuued 

Wilder and Lyme 

Note Book Notes . 

The Soug of the Check 

In the Heart of the Mountains 

The Plug .... 

In Eaton, N. H. . 

In Eaton .... 

Along the Saco 

The Old Saco 

From Swift River to Sandwich 

Little Pitcher's Notes . 

At Sixtj'-Six 

Notes from Freedom . 

The Honest Forester . 

In the Ossipee Country- 
Picking Up . . . ■ 

A Fresh Story or Two 

Life's Tides .... 

When Dad Runs the Separator 

Wayside Notes . 

More Notes . . . • 

Another Batch of Notes 

Snake Stories 

Along the Connecticut 

TheTater .... 

UpinThetford . 

Among the Green Hills of Hanover 

The Pohtical Situation in New Hampsl 
August 11, 1900) 

Difficulties of a Humorist . 

A Few Stories from the Saco 



as it 



appeared 



'AGE 
1 

4 

7 

11 

14 

If) 

19 

20 

20 

23 

24 

26 

28 

29 

32 

35 

3fi 

40 

41 

44 

45 

48 

48 

49 

52 

55 

58 

60 

63 

63 

66 

70 
72 
75 



IV 


( 


ONTENT 


■>. 












Mr. Pitcher Still Traveling 


88 


lu Ossipee 












82 


lu Madison 












84 


Jim Durgey's Farm 












86 


Milton Three Pouds aud Up Aloug 












88 


Chocorua aud the Bear Camp 












91 


Predictions — Wlien You Are Sure 












94 


When the Paper Man Comes 












96 


The Winchester .... 












97 


Old Man Finn 
















98 


Thaw . 
















102 


Get Your Gun 
















103 


Sandy the Tramp 
















103 


To Our Mothers . 
















105 


Snyder's Twins . 
















106 


Endicott Rock 



















ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Sumner F. Clafliu 

' ' Hanover After Commencement 

The Profile 

The Peak of Chocorua 
Squam Lake, near Sandwich 



PAGE 

Frontispiece 

Facing 8 

17 

89 

31 



" And ye who are living shall thirst and lack the while we are 

resting there. " Facing 35 

Melvin Village "47 

Newfound Lake "49 

Northeast View from Cardigan Mountain, Newfound Lake iu 
the Distance Facing 53 



Connecticut River Below Hanover Bridge 

"My Home " 

Union Station, Rochester, N. H: 

" The Splendor of Mornings on Mountain Tops " . 

Chocorua from Chocorua Lake 

The Connecticut Valley, Ascutney in the Distance . 
Endicott Rock 



60 
65 
80 
87 
91 
105 
107 



DATED AT FREEDOM, N. H. 



The ^yood Butchers at WorJt. — Uncle John Elwell and His 
Old Grist Mill. — The Weak-kneed Recruit. 



Freedom, December 18, 1904:. 

A noticeable feature of Carroll County scenery is the 
rapid disappearance of the evergreen forests. ;Most of the 
lower lands and hills have been cut over in recent years by 
the everywhere present portable sawmill. If it is not pres- 
ent now a large conical mound of sawdust shows that it 
recently has been. Only the inaccessible fastnesses of the 
towering mountains have escaped the woodman's axe and 
saw. Most of the pine and spruce timber is now sawed 
down and then sawed into proper lengths, and any thing 
that will saw out a two by four stick twelve feet long goes. 
The skinning process is being done up brown. That this 
leaves a verj' dilapidated looking countrv goes without say- 
ing. The only system followed is one of complete exploita- 
tion. By the way, while President Roosevelt was men- 
tioning the new reservations for public park purposes of 
the Colorado Canyon and an addition to Yellowstone Park 
and others. I wonder why he didn't say a word al)out Sen- 
ator Gallinger's pet hobby, the White ^Mountain Park? 
Personally I believe that every resident of New England 
should be interested in the movement to set apart the 
White ^lountain region for a public park and it should be 
acquired from the wood butchers and scenery spoilers as 
soon as possible before their devastating work is complete. 

Last week I attended a baked bean supper not a thou- 
sand miles from Tamworth. Admission fifteen cents, and 
every mother, son and daughter of that crowd had a twenty- 



2 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

five cent hunger along with them, or I'm no judge; and 
after the supper there was an entertainment worth a quarter 
more, by local talent. The ladies of the local parish fur- 
nished the beans, also a first-class outfit of pies, cakes and 
fixings, and paid their fare in besides, I understand. 
There was a handsome sum realized and I'm glad of it. 
With such an arrangement the society couldn't lose any- 
thing, and at all events all who participated had an excel- 
lent time, but while it's none of my business, I would sug- 
gest that the society would be considerable richer by charg- 
ing what the entertainment and supper were really worth. 

In conversation with my old friend, Hardy Wiggin, while 
at Tamworth recently, the talk turned to the 'subject of 
gristmills, which are becoming less common every year in 
this section, and I remarked that I had heard that when 
John Elwell ran the gristmill here at Tamworth, he had 
all he could grind, although often running the machinery 
far into the night. Mr. Wiggin pointed out that the ma- 
chinery formerly in use was much slower in operation 
than that used at present, and while he did not claim that 
that was the reason why he only advertises to run his. mill 
on Saturdays now. he seldom has enough grinding to 
make a day's work of it at that. He told me a little story 
that is worth repeating. It seems a man from Birch In- 
tervale came down one morning to Uncle Elwell 's mill and 
left a bushel of corn to be ground. It was a cold morning 
in winter and by nine o'clock. Uncle John had got his old- 
fashioned cumbersome water wheel free of ice and started 
on the grist. At eleven o'clock he was still grinding, and 
the man from Birch Intervale was getting impatient. "Mr. 
Elwell," says he, "I could eat that meal faster than you 
grind." "Could, hey!" snorted Uncle John. " 'Bout how 
long do you think you could keep it up?" "Till I 
starved to death, b'gosh!" was the laconic reply of the 
gentleman from Birch Intervale. 

Wlien I was over in Smoky Hollow a week or two ago 
(not far from IMelvin Village) my old friend Alfred Ayers 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 6 

was telling about the various articles in the line of hen, 
skunk and other oils that were good for the joints, rheuma- 
tism, wounds and the like, which reminded him of Uncle 
Joe Plummer, who once lived over on the "^lountain Road" 
that skirts the Ossipee group from Melvin's to Tuftonbor- 
ough Center. The old man (he was younger then) was 
drafted to go to the front and didn't want to go — not very 
bad! When he arrived at the front, or as near to it as he 
ever got, he suddenly became the possessor of as unruly a 
pair of weak knees as ever puzzled an army surgeon. They 
wobbled fearfully. They bent backwards and forwards 
and sideways. He absolutely could not stand on his pins, 
and as for service he was as useless as a wooden Indian. 
That the surgeons were puzzled puts it mildly. They were 
absolutely dumbfounded and tetotally mystified. No such 
case had ever been encountered before, or has been since, 
so far as I know. The man was not shamming, that was 
certain, because his legs showed for themselves, and so far 
from "doing it on purpose," the learned officers could not 
see how he could do it at all. Neither had they ever heard 
of a case where Nature had played a similar trick on an 
otherwise healthy man. IMr. Plummer soldiered in the 
hospital for several months, and finally in despair the medi- 
cal authorities discharged him and he was sent home, where 
he rapidly recovered ; and years afterward, while in the en- 
joyment of a fat pension of, I am told, twenty-four dollars 
a month, he never ceased to extol the virtues of rattlesnake 's 
oil as a lubricant. "I don't know what I sh'd a done," 
said he, "ef them boys 'er mine hadn't kep me supplied 
from rattlers they got up on the ole Ossipee Mountain ; an ' 
fact is I had got gol darn nigh run out ov ile when them 
;sawbones gin me up ez a hopeless case!" 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 



THE TALE OF A GRIP. 



How I Got Separated from Mine and the Nerve-Baching 
Strain That Followed. 



I am only a light brown leather Grip — you may call me 
Grip for short. Do not think, however, to pass me by 
without further parley. I have a tale to tell. That short, 
stout, pussy individual that escorts me around needn't 
think he's so large. He couldn't do a thing without me, 
and he knows it now. He didn't, though, till the other day 
w^hen he and I parted company at the railroad junction. 
You see it was this w^ay. The gentleman who considers him- 
self my boss went and crammed a number of pass books, 
with a lot of names and dates in them, into my capacious in- 
sides, also a number of magazines and other papers and 
blank receipts and five or six apples, which latter he meant 
later to transfer to his own interior — but there's many a 
slip, you know. Well we got over to Epping Junction — I 
think the conductor said — and Mr. Man got out, and taking 
me by the handle trudged down the platform to the little 
cooped-up waiting room, which was rather more cooped up 
than usual from the fact that a lot of carpenters were cut- 
ting out sections of each wing of the station and shoving 
the remaining portions up together, and the wheezy old coal 
stove in the center of the room was doing its best to drive 
Jack Frost out through a thousand crevices in the tem- 
porary walls. 

Mr. Man dumped me down on the long settee that ran 
along one side of the room Avithout any ceremony — he's 
got used to that — but I bet I learned him a lesson though. 
Then he w^ent out and walked up and down the platform. 
There was a whole lot of ladies in the waiting room and Mr. 
Man is a little mite diffident in the presence of the other 
sex — between you and me — and I noticed him glance 
through the window as he passed to see what the prospect 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 

was of a corner to himself. Well, the next I noticed a tall, 
slim man, with gray hair and a pleasant face, rushed in and 
asked the station man if he couldn't leave his grip inside 
the office (that's where my boss ought to have left me, 
he's awful careless), and the station man said he could, and 
out he rushed. Right at the door he met a man he called 
Brown, and I heard him ask Brown if he was going over, 
and Brown said he was, and then he looked in and saw me 
minding my own business and saying nothing to any one, 
and then he looked after Mr. Dickey — that was the tall gray 
man's name — and he saw that Mr. Dickey hadn't any grip, 
and was just climbing into his (Mr. Brown's) wagon, and 
he got the fool notion that Mr. Dickey didn't know what 
he was about, and had forgotten his grip; and what does 
he do but dance up to me — who was sitting there with all 
those ladies and minding my own business — and he grabs 
me up and races after Mr. Dickey and shoves me into 
his wagon and off we go, me all the time so full of rage and 
indignation at such a high-handed outrage that I could not 
speak. What was I to do ? There was my boss, Mr. Man, 
walking calmly up the platform, and as we rattled round 
the corner up the street the tail board fell down and I was 
in plain view of him, but he never saw me at all. If I 
was as absent-minded I don't know what would happen to 
me. I resigned myself to my fate. Over to the postofifice 
we went — IMr. Brown carries the mail, you know. Then we 
went to the hotel, and I was slapped down into one corner 
and left to my own melancholy reflections. I knew a 
catastrophy had occurred. I, the custodian of my boss' 
business, from whom I had never been so rudely separated 
before, was lying here in a dark corner of the hotel office, 
unable to move hand or foot — I didn't have any. And 
there was i\Ir. ]\Ian — what about him ? There 'd be a pretty 
scene when he discovered that I was gone. I imagined him 
coming gingerly into the female infested precincts of the 
all-tore-up station, and burying his bashful face behind a 
newspaper — a favorite trick of his. Then by and by when 



6 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

a lot more ladies came trooping in and seats were at a 
premium, him peeking around furtively to rescue and re- 
move me from my position on the settee — only to his horror 
to find me gone. 

You've heard of a drowning man catching at straws, and 
the scenes of a lifetime passing through his mind as he 
churns the water for the last time. Well, I expect my boss 
was about the worst broke up man you ever saw. He 
realized, I hope, as never before, that while I am modest 
and unassuming, I am really an important part of the 
outfit. I know for a fact that Mr. Man seriously con- 
templated abandoning his trip and returning home for a 
new valise and another outfit. How did he know that 
Mr. Dickey and Mr. Brown knew anything about me ? Had 
he not proclaimed his loss to all the occupants of the sta- 
tion? He seriously contemplated calling in a matron to 
search the ladies. He really wished they'd move over lest 
their skirts covered his precious Grip. He peered anx- 
iously under the benches and the stove. He hunted up the 
station agent and the track men and wildly thought of tel- 
ephoning the general manager. Put yourself in his place, 
gentle reader, and you won't wonder. I am an important 
part of a traveling man's outfit. He can't do business 
without me, let me tell you. 

Just about this time, fate, or chance, or providence, or 
psychical phenomena, led Mr. Man to step up to Mr. Dickey 
and Mr. Brown and very humblj' and somewhat hopelessly 
ask them if they had seen anything of me. Mr. Dickey said 
he hadn't. Mr. Brown said he hadn't. "Did-n't you put 
your grip into the olfice?" asked ]Mr. Man of Mr. Dickey. 
Mr. Dickey averred that he did. "Well, now. you didn't 
pick up mine by mistake, did you, when you went over 
town?" asked Mr. Man with a voice tremulous with emo- 
tion. "I don't think I could have; did you see me?" he 
asked of Mr. Brown. I suspect he may have lost his grip 
himself sometime and wanted to be as easy as he could with 
my poor boss. 



WAYSIDE NOTES. ' 

' ' I say, ' ' says Mr. Brown, as a ray of intelligence lighted 
up his countenance, "wasn't that your grip I picked up in 
the station and took over to town just now?" "Of course 
not," says ]\Ir. Dickey, and then there was a hustle. Mr. 
Man's train was due and me a quarter of a mile away. Mr. 
Brown jumps into the mail wagon and goes rattling over 
to town after me, while "Sir. Man paces up and down the 
platform, looking at his watch, and then at the grade over 
which the train for Rochester is expected any moment to 
appear. Well, to make a long story not much longer, Mr. 
Brown came into the hotel office where I w^as fuming and 
fretting in my corner, and roughly yanked me out of it; 
then he slapped me into his rum old wagon with a bang 
that jarred my slats. I really believe he gave me a spiteful 
kick as he jumped to the seat and we rattled back again 
to the Junction, where we arrived just as the Rochester 
train came in. 

There was a joyful reunion. :\Ir. :\Ian knows my value 
as a traveling companion now as he never did before. The 
conductor shouted all aboard, and we two swung onto the 
platform as the train rolled away, and the incident was 
closed. 



A RAMBLE IN VERMONT. 



The Red-Faced Gent.— Hanover After Commencement.— 
Mr. Gihhens' Adventures.— Mr. Blanchard's Tin Pedlar.. 
—Old Man Manchester's Wonderful Plug. 



Editor of The Gazette: 

If any of your readers happen to see a red-faced gent, 
carrying an imitation leather bag, about two hundred 
pounds avoirdupois — the gent, not the bag, of course — pass- 
ing along, through, or over, any of the roads within twenty 
miles of Hanover, during the next few weeks, casting fur- 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 

tive glances at the hayfields or scraping hurried and in- 
vokmtary acquaintance with the canine fraternity by the 
way, this is to inform them that he is not a candidate for 
initiation into the ancient and honorable order of hay- 
makers. He is a granger and a pretty good hand at ' ' mow- 
ing away" cabbages, beans, potatoes and other products 
of the farm except hay, and his real mission is in connec- 
tion with your valuable paper — this by the way of expla- 
nation. 

Hanover after Commencement is a good deal like the cir- 
cus field after the menagerie has departed, but still its 
quiet streets at any time wear a homelike aspect that is 
peculiarly its own. I was not long in finding that a large 
part of the Gazette's sphere of usefulness lies on the Ver- 
mont side of the river up through Norwich, Strafiford, 
Vershire, Thetford, Fairlee, etc., and the first postoffice I 
struck, across the river, was Lewiston, located right in the 
bottom of the river valley, which is here quite narrow. 
The territory coming here for mail is restricted to the lit- 
tle hamlet and the river road for a couple of miles above, 
but a half day spent here resulted in a doubling of the list 
of the Gazette, and an evening at mine host Blanchard's 
equipped me with several, to me, new" and interesting yarns, 
a few of which are here set forth : 

I believe the old gentleman's name was Gibbens who used 
to relate these yarns to interested listeners at the popular 
auditorium where cheese, molasses, codfish and dried ap- 
ple were dispensed, along with local wit and wisdom and 
sage advice. 

He said that in his younger days he used to team in win- 
ter across Lake Champlain, and one cold day he started 
from the New York side to cross to Burlington with a six- 
horse team and a load of fifteen hundred bushels (sic) 
of grain. As he proceeded, the weather became rapidly 
warmer, and as he sat upon the top of the piled-up bags the 
heat became so oppressive that he nodded off to sleep. How 
long he slept he knew not, but imagine his surprise, on wak- 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 9 

ing up with a start, to fiud that his team had stopped, that 
a heavy downpour of rain accompanied by thunder and 
lightning had set in, and that his load and team were en- 
tirely surrounded by water. In fact, he was floating on a 
detached cake of ice about half an acre in extent. "What 
to do I didn't know," said Mr. Gibbens, ''till a happy 
thought occurred to me and I got down and went around 
to the hind end of my load, pulled out the tail board and 
with it for an oar paddled my way ashore. It was the clos- 
est shave I ever had," concluded the old man. The old 
gentleman stated that one night he was awakened from a 
sound sleep and on looking out in his garden he descried a 
dozen or more cats at work on his just-made turnip beds. 
It was a cold, frosty night in June, he said; in fact, a 
freezing shower early in the evening had coated beds and 
all with a coating of glare ice. "I asked Maria, my wife, 
where my ammunition for my old Queen's arm was and 
she said she didn't know, so I went and got a lot of crab 
apples and loaded my gun with those. Taking aim at the 
howling bunch of cats in the garden I let 'er drive, and, 
would you believe it, we gathered up two bushels of fine 
mince meat the next morning piled up against the garden 
fence." Of course we believe it. What interest would old 
Gibbens have in prevaricating about a little thing like that ? 

]\Ir. Blanehard told about a tin pedlar who once stopped 
with him over night, and during the course of the evening, 
the said tin pedlar became reminiscent and incautiously 
"told one" on himself. He said he called at a house one 
day and was met at the door by as handsome a young white 
woman as he ever saw, and hanging to her skirts were three 
or four pickaninnies as black as the proverbial ace of 
spades. ' ' How in the name of creation, if you will excuse 
my boldness, madam, did you ever become possessed of this 
nigger family?" asked the pedlar sympathetically. 

"Well, mister," the young woman replied, "if you must 
know, I'll tell you. I had a sister that married a tin ped- 
lar and I married a nigger to redeem the family!" 



10 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

Old man Manchester, who used to live in Norwich, was a 
pretty good hand to tell a story, according to ]\Ir. Blan- 
ehard, who said that while stopping at his uncle's house 
many years ago, the old man called there one morning and 
after the cider had passed around two or three times, 
cleared his throat and told the following yarn for the bene- 
fit of the young folks who were eagerly listening : "I 
had an old horse, ' ' said he, ' * that I prized highly, l)ut poor 
Tom got so old that I decided one day to kill him. I took 
him out on the barn floor and knocked him in the head, 
and, just to remember him by, I skinned him and hung the 
skin over the high beam, intending the next morning to 
draw the carcass away and bury it. In the night I heard a 
racket in the barn as though some large animal was thrash- 
ing around, and on investigation I found old Tom had come 
to life and was standing on the barn floor chewing hay off 
the mow. What to do I didn 't know. The poor old horse 's 
hide was frozen stiff on the beam, but there lay a lot of 
warm sheeps' pelts on the floor, and without thinking of 
the consequences, I grabbed up three or four of them and 
threw them over the old horse's back, to which thej^ stuck 
at once. Well the old horse got along so well after that 
I turned him out to pasture in the spring, and when it came 
time to shear sheep I got two hundred and fiftj^ pounds 
of nice wool off from the old plug." 

I heard some more stories this week but am not just 
sure Brother Musgrove will print them, so quit just where 
I am. 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 



11 



VERMONT RAMBLE CONTINUED. 



The Union Village Dam.— The Phonograph.— Doc Howard 
of West Fairlee. — Walton's Vermont Register for 1837. 



As Brother Musgrove used the last grist I sent in, I here- 
with enclose some more. I was up at Union Village. Vt., 
last week, via Pompanoosuc, known as Pompa, for short, 
the whole name being Ompompanoosuc, I believe. At Pat- 
terson's I found a busy industry in the manufacture of 
hard wood furniture that employs quite a number of hands 
steadily at fair wages. 

At Union Village I stopped at the home of the well- 
known cattle buyer, A. V. Turner, and I wish I'd taken 
more notes of the interesting things he told me. In speak- 
ing of the Colburn blacksmith shop, he said it once stood 
further up the stream at the point where the old dam and 
flourishing mills used to stand, that were washed away by 
the remarkable flood of October 1, 1869. At that time 
Doctor Howard lived in the village, and as one of the own- 
ers of the dam and mill property, he tried to interest his 
colleagues, some of whom owned the Colburn shop, in re- 
building the dam, which would necessitate moving that 
building a few feet out of the way while the dam timbers 
were being put in place. The owners of the shop, how- 
ever, would not allow it to be moved, and after twice get- 
ting out the necessary timbers and failing to engage the 
other owners in the enterprise, the doctor in disgust sold 
out his interest and left the town. Across the road from 
mine host's, in Union Village, was a phonograph sending 
forth its fascinating waxery voice on the evening air. What 
would the people of fifty years ago have thought of it? 
What will the people fifty years hence be having in the 
way of new inventions ? ]\Iay we be there to see. 

I met a second cousin of mine the other night about sun 



12 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

down, up on IMiddle Brook in West Fairlee, and at his 
invitation I adjourned to his domicile and tarried with 
him that night. He had been out in the Civil War and 
was full of yarns that would fill up your valuable paper, 
but the incident that I want to relate was regarding an- 
other Doctor Howard, who practised at West Fairlee many 
years ago. 

A short, heavy, thick-set, black-whiskered Englishman, 
he had a good practice, but being too accommodating to 
those in trouble, he finally had to face a jury in conse- 
quence of the untimely death of a young woman patient. 
The jury thought him guilty and the judge gave him eight 
years at Windsor making scythe snaths. Medical gentle- 
men should not be too accommodating. The doctor had 
plenty of time for mature reflection between his stunts in 
the workshop and I presume he came to the above conclu- 
sion long before he finally got out for good behavior, some- 
what less than the specified time. He came back up to 
West Fairlee and opened a drug store. One evening a lit- 
tle man about four and a half feet high, who had been 
coached by the group of loungers out on the curbstone, 
walked into the shop, and standing where he could make his 
escape before the doctor got around the counter, he began : 
"M-M-Mr. Howard, h-h-how did you 1-1-like making scythe 
snaths down to W-W-Winsorr ? " "That's how I liked it," 
roared the doctor, and before the little man could reach the 
door he bounded over the counter and with one hist of his 
heavy boot sent the little man sailing into the street. He, 
too, learned something by his experience. 

William Stevens of West Fairlee, Vt., has a Walton's 
Vt. Eegister and Farmer's Almanac for 1837. Contains 
a vast amount of national and state information, list of 
members of congress and town statistics. 

It is an interesting query whether or not any of the men 
who were old enough to figure as town officers in the state 
of Vermont, in 1837, and especially those whose names are 
given in the list, are living today. We think it is not 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 13 

likely, but many of the readers of the Gazette would prob- 
ably remember them as having been living among them 
within the last twenty or thirty years. Life is a kaleidoscope 
at best, into which we gaze for a few short years ; it is ever 
changing and the combinations that are constantly forming 
and reforming would startle us if we could look ahead a 
dozen or a score of years and see what they were to be. 
We wouldn't want to, however. Things happen full fast 
enough to suit us. To drop into first person singular, I 
ventured into a hospitable looking dooryard, near the curi- 
ous little pond above East Thetford, Vt., last Saturday, 
thinking no evil, and with no other design than to spread 
a knowledge of the Gazette to them that sat in darkness, 
and were just getting through their dinner. Arrived at 
the shed door I was met by a long yellow cur dog that had 
apparently come in contact with a lawn mower and lost a 
part of his hair in ragged, irregular patches. The canine 
proceeded to get acquainted with me in a manner that was 
neither refined nor polite, and as the tousled-haired genius 
who stood in the doorway and watched proceedings didn't 
call the dog off, I quietly but firmly resented the undue 
familiarity. It is curious that the owners and fanciers of 
these lovely animals never seem to realize that other folks 
have rights and privileges that are at least equal to those 
of a dog, and when they call on business, which is perfectly 
legitimate, they are entitled in common decency to at least 
civil treatment. Yes, I hit the dog, and he ki-yied. I 
meant to hit him, and I would hit any dog that had never 
been educated to know his place, and Avhen the tousled- 
headed owner asked for a bill of particulars I gave them 
in the only language that the OAvner of such an animal 
could understand. It so happened that a female head was 
at the doorway, and the next instant a fusillade of old 
boots, rubl)ers, and other bric-a-brac rained around me. for- 
tunately witli no disastrous results, as a woman's aim is 
never very accurate, and especially a woman boiling over 
with wrath because her little doggie (about the size of a 



14 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

wolf) had been abused. I stopped long enough in the 
yard to explain to the crowd the exact social status they 
occupied in my humble opinion, and then resumed my 
placid and normal journey down the road. Soon on, soon 
over. Honors about even. And all brought on because I 
hit another man's too familiar canine. We never know 
when storms will rage about our ears and boots, rubbers and 
fur will flv. 



WILDER AND LYME. 



A Good Bath. — John Laiham's Religion and His Appetite. 
— John Straw's Yarns. 



I have visited the pleasant village of Wilder this week, 
and added about 400 per cent, to the Gazette list. I also 
wandered into the elegant library building, the gift of the 
founder of the place, I believe, and in hunting around after 
"the boss" I found a fine bowling alley, billiard or pool 
room, a smoking or card room, reading rooms, and, best of 
all, some fine bath rooms, with regulations indicating that 
a bath was free. I take everything that is free on prin- 
ciple, whether I need it in my business or not, and so I 
had one. I disrobed, stepped into the "sousing room" and 
monkeyed with several of the valves and knobs for a while, 
and by and by the tin halo (like Eockefeller wears) over- 
head began to squirt and I was assaulted on all sides by 
streams of water. I almost *felt like "Moses-smote-the 
rock," of whom I used to hear in Sunday school, but after 
coming down out of an atmosphere of ninety in the shade to 
get pelted with quite so much liquid coolness so suddenly 
almost unnerved me, and you know it takes quite a shock to 
unnerve a newspaper agent or book canvasser. 

Speaking of baths reminds me of John Latham, well 
known in Lvme and Hanover fortv vears ago. He was 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 



15 



web-footed and could swim like a duck. He was also re- 
ligious at times. Some town boys at Lyme once met him 
on the bridge that spanned Grant Brook near Turner's 
blacksmith shop, and asked him to kneel down and pray 
for them, intending to push liim into the deep water below 
and see him swim out after the ceremony had begun. Un- 
cle John was too astute for them and while he knelt down 
and prayed he kept his eyes wide open. "Why don't you 
shut your eyes, John?" they asked him. "Well, boys! 
We are comnianded to watch as well as pray," replied John 
with an expansive grin and I guess he had to in that crowd 
all right. Del Webb, with whom I stopped one night in 
Hanover, remembered John Latham quite well, and told 
of being in bathing with some boys in the Connecticut when 
it was proposed to swim across. Del was the youngest 
of the lot and as he could not swim the biggest boys told 
him he must stay back. "The little lad can go just as 
well as not," said Uncle John. "I will carry him on my 
back" (giving a broad sound to back), and he did. Del 
affirms that he rode as easily as a horse. 

One time John was at Commencement and a boniface 
was giving a full dinner of baked beans and the fixings 
for twenty-five cents. John had been, which is said to be 
not unusual with him, about a week without a square meal, 
and some of the Lyme boys chipped in to give him a feed. 
John ate and ate and ate, seven plates full of beans, and 
was just looking around for the bread and pie when the 
restaurateur threw up the sponge. "Good God, boys, how 
much will he eat? Here take back your money and call 
him off!" John, however, smiled that heavenly smile of 
his and allowed "he'd finish his meal now he Avas at it." 
And he did, but he couldn't have got another except at 
special rates. 

The heavy and erratic showers of the past week remind 
me of a story told by John Straw, formerly of Lyme, who 
averred that he or someone he knew was driving over near 
Moose ]Mountain one day when a violent thunder storm 



16 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

broke over the mountain and soon the big drops began to 
rain in the hind end of his express wagon. He had a good 
reader, a remarkable roader in fact, and he just touched 
him with the whip, when he put off before the on-coming 
gale and storm like the very wind itself. It was four 
miles to Lyme Plain, but he made it, and although the rain 
beat in the hind end of the wagon all the way, filling it 
half full, not a drop of water touched horse or driver. 

]\Ir. Straw also told about a man in Lyme who used to 
tell some pretty good stories himself, one of them to the 
effect that he was out hoeing corn one hot day in June 
near a stone wall that separated the field from a pasture. 
All of a sudden he was startled by seeing a large deer leap 
the fence and land in a huge snow drift, where with a 
well directed blow he killed him with his hoe. "Look here, 
mister," says a bystander, "how do you account for that 
air snow drift in hoein' time?" "Oh, well!" said the 
story teller nonchalantly, "I guess I got two stories 
mixed." 

But that, dear reader, is not as bad as telling the same 
one twice to the same crowd. 



NOTE BOOK NOTES. 



The House of Eleven Gables. — TJte SiJite Fence. — Auto- 
mohiles — "Otter-Mow-Grass." — Mrs. Hodges' Bugs.- — 
The Song of the Check. 



Jackson, August 20. 1905. 

In the midst of lofty mountains once more! Nature at 
its very best ! Fresh and green and smiling — always smil- 
ing — just like me, only, however, I may not be so green. 

The ' ' House of Eleven Gables ' ' near the Crakashin Golf 
Links is full, aye more than full. I sauntered up to the 




THB PKOFILH. 



Up whrre the blue of Heaven 
Contrasts thy f^ray black brow, 

Thou art indeed a Monarch — 
Master of Tinu' art thoxi! 

Brooding aljove yon valleys 

Where the hill-born rivers flow, 

Stately thy i)ose vs'hile wild wind blows 
And the storm (doiids come and go! 

Thy rock-hewn face forever takes 

The elemental shocks. 
A monument to Patience thon, 

And SileiK-e done in rocks! 



For when the gale revilest tlioii 
Or the fierce sun burning hot. 

Thou art serene, benignant 
And thy mute lips answer not! 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 



17 



broad piazza and inquired for the genial proprietor. Pro- 
prietors are always genial except when listening to a tale 
of hard luck to be succeeded by a request for a temporary 
loan, then the smile flickers out and a look of ineffable sad- 
ness succeeds, such as settles on the face of a professional 
humorist. He has heard that tale before, and as he thinks 
of seventeen days' unpaid board and the probably empty 
trunk up in No. 49, a cold glitter steals into his cabn blue 
eye. As I remarked before, I inquired for the landlord. 
"^ No one spoke at once, but after a few minutes a repose- 
ful school marm from Camlu-idge rose to the situation and 
advised me to pass around the gable end, bear down past 
the side veranda and through the woodshed and I'd prob- 
ably find the old man in the ice house, while his wife and 
baby might be swinging in a hammock in the hen-pen. The 
horse barn being occupied by some students from Brown 
University. 

Sometimes I find the "family" cooped in the wood- 
shed, sometimes in the attic and again do^vn cellar. Some 
have only moved into the horse stable while the rush lasts, 
]3ut everywhere I have been this week it is the same story, 
and the festive boarder and the ubiquitous landlord are 
both tanned and making hay while the sun shines. 

Where I stopped ]\Ionday night they told me about the 
tall and rough looking "spite fence" that adorns (?) the 
former driveway to the little white church near by. It 
stands out like a sore thumb and bristles with the uncon- 
cealed hostility that it was built to represent, and yet there 
were two sides to the story. The owner of the adjoin- 
ing property, it seems, went to the church officers and of- 
fered to pay the entire cost of moving the edifice to a 
better location and give one hundred dollars in addition 
to put in a furnace, which has long been needed, his idea 
being to benefit the church and secure for himself l)etter 
access from his residence to the road. 

The church officers demurred. AVas this not the place 
where their fathers had worshipped? Why shoidd they 



18 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

disturb the traditions? No; they couldn't and they 
wouldn't! And they didn't either, and the abutting 
owner didn't conceal his disgust. Then the rumor went 
round that he was going to build a spite fence. One en- 
terprising citizen from the East Branch neighborhood was 
reported as saying that if he (the owner) built a spite 
fence, he (the enterprising citizen) would "suttenly" tear 
it down. Of course our Chicago friend heard of it, and 
of course his fighting blood boiled up. He hadn't much 
idea of building a spite fence anyway, but a dare is a dare, 
and up went the fence, a good strong one, such as an ox 
couldn 't stir. Then our legal luminary aforesaid sat down 
and waited for the e. c. from East Branch to come along. 
A few curious people were in ear shot when the gentleman 
came up the road, but if they thought there was going to 
be any trouble they were disappointed. The Chicagoan 
pointed out the fact that there was the fence and if the 
East Brancher thought it best to tear it down he could 
wade in any time. ''I'll not take any legal measures to 
stop it." he concluded, Init there was a reminiscent look 
in his eye that boded something doing for any one who 
disturbed his pretty fence, and the man from East Branch 
made haste to disclaim any such unholy intention as that 
imputed to him. and the fence may be seen right where it 
was built any fair day without the aid of a spy glass. 

Automobiles have been more common than ever this 
summer and the familiar "honk, honk" of the great ma- 
chines as they speed along the highways has almost become 
so common as not to disturb the equanimity of the equine 
population. A couple of autoists halted their car along 
side of a stone wall the other day, and seeing a farmer 
on the other side tinkering up his mowing machine, one 
of them inquired rather flippantly, "What ye got there, 
old man, — an automobile?" 

"Naw," replied the old farmer with evident disgust, 
' ' 'tort ter mow grass, but 'twon 't b ' gosh ! ' ' 

There are several things an automobile ought to do also. 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 19 

but it won't, and when you buy one on the strength of 
the agent's assertion that it ean be run for one cent a mile, 
you don't want to forget the anxious moments spent in 
prayerful meditation as you lie on your back and gaze with 
perplexity and wheel-grease on your manly countenance 
earnestly up among the vitals of the dodgasted thing to 
try and ascertain why it gets balky. It's always breaking 
down at the wrong time, which is any old time, and a cent 
a mile for gasoline is one of the least of its owner's troubles. 
Try it and see for yourself ! 

Going up over by Double Head Mountain through Dun- 
dee, I called at IMrs. Hodges. Mrs. Hodges has one of 
those old hand looms that used to be so common fifty years 
ago or more, and she is using it too. She makes stacks 
of rugs and they are nice ones, just the kind one dreams 
about getting out on to in a cold winter morning when 
the thermometer is way down to zero, and the fire has 
gone out, as it usually does. Soft as velvet, thick and 
sumptuous. It will pay you to stop and look at them if 
you ever pass that way. 

Here is a little skit to wind up with : 



THE SONG OF THE CHECK. 



"Lan'lord, dear, I waut your ear, 
My little tale to speil; 
I've lo.st my pocket-book, it's queer, — 

You know just how I feel! 
But I'll send you a check, Lau'Iord, 
I will, 

When I get home tomorrow, 
I'll send you a big fat check, 
I will; 

And a ten I'd like to borrow." 
But the landlord laughed a bitter laugh, 

He'd heard that tale before; 
And the man with a hat-box, in room IG, 
Was briefly shown the door! 



20 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

IN THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAINS. 



"He Wanted His Hoss Writ Up." — Speaking of White 
Horse Ledge. — The Mason's Secret Work. 



Bartlett, August 25, 1905. 

Since writing you last I have visited Glen, Bartlett and 
passed along the west side of the Saco to Conway. There 
were no signs that the corn cannery at Glen was going to 
start up this season and my impression is that the experi- 
ence of the last few years has been rather disastrous to 
the business along the Saco. Early frosts have worked 
havoc with the crop, and I know of some canneries that 
have moved down into the lower part of the state. 

I got in and rode up the east side of the Saco the other 
day with a gentleman, who demanded as a penalty that 
I should immortalize his docile old plough horse. I criti- 
cally surveyed the animal for signs of precocity which 
might not be visible to the naked eye or that might have 
escaped me on a cursory and hasty glance, and not seeing 
any, I asked a few leading questions to draw out the in- 
formation desired regarding pedigree, etc. 

THE PLUG. 

As we passed up the valley, i^ir! 

That nag with drooping head, 
He traveled like a snail, sir! 

Indeed, I thought him dead. 
His breed I could not learn, sir! 

Perchance a Morgan sire 
And a Pereheron his dam, sir, 

If any should inquire. 
He was from "Kennedaw", sir; ' 

Of that I make no doubt. 
Five hundred for a pair, sir. 

The old man flung it out; — 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 21 

And another nag to boot, sir! 

For so I understood 
That the man who turned the trick, sir. 

Was two hundred to the good. 
He shelled the golden shekels, sir, 

Like corn from off the "Cobb." 
And I'm the handy rhymer, sir, 

To celebrate the job. 

Speaking of horses puts me in mind of the celebrated 
pegasus that is said to adorn the face of White Horse ledge. 

It's a horse all right, 

With a tail good and strong; 
But he "haint got no legs," 
And he can't get along! 
His head is high flung 

But there's something that's wrong, 
For he "haint got no legs," 

And he can't get along! 
He stays while the tempests 
Shriek out their wild song, 
For he "haint got no legs," 
And he can't get along! 
As long as the Saco shall roll on its way. 
As long as the great cliffs above it shall stay, 
'Twill remain there, I think, till the great final gong, 
For it "haint got no legs," and it can't get along! 

Wliy can't some artistic soul with a brush and a pot of 
paint just touch up this wonderful freak of nature by ad- 
ding the lacking members ? 

A couple of years ago I had occasion to write a piece 
about Mr. Joseph Pitman, who taught fifty-five terms of 
school in the Saco valley, beginning when he was seven- 
teen. It has recently come to my knowledge that the 
gentleman who taught "Uncle Joe" in his younger days 
(he is now eighty-two) is still living and hale for a man of 
his years, at the age of eighty-nine. I refer to Mr. J. M. 
Meserve of the Iron INIountain House, Jackson. I do not 
know, but it would not surprise me if ^Mr. INIeserve were 
the oldest living school teacher in the state. 



22 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

At the place where I stopped in Bartlett last Monday 
night, my hostess was explaining the significance to her of 
a Masonic chart hanging above the dining room table. It 
seems that it had belonged to her father, who was a prom- 
inent and well known member of the fraternity, and in 
connection with it she stated that when she was a little 
girl, certain uninstructed members of the order would come 
to her father for instruction in the lettered work of the 
order. "I had a play room," said she, "near the stove 
pipe hole above the sitting room where father received his 
friends, and one evening as he was tutoring a brother as 
to the meaning of a long string of letters, which I had 
heard repeated from my point of vantage so long that I 
had got it by heart, the visitor chanced to ask about a 
couple of letters when my father's attention was attracted 
elsewhere, and as the answer was not forthcoming promptly, 
I eagerly called out the missing words from my perch by 
the stove pipe. That settled it. There wasn't any more 
secret work for me, and while I didn't get it where the 
chicken got the ax, I got it plenty, so I didn't hanker for 
any more of father's secret work." 

To change the subject : How many of our readers know 
how the matter of a national park for the White Mountain 
region stands at present ? Is it true, as is now stated, that 
Doctor Gallinger's bill calls for the purchase for the pur- 
pose of the park of "stump land only"? If so, we bet- 
ter not have a park, for the enterprising lumbermen can 
make stump land out of it fast enough as they are doing 
now, and if permitted to keep it they might kindly fork 
over a few dollars in taxes if they felt like it. I do not 
think Doctor Gallinger is such a humorist as this would in- 
dicate, but unless the powers that (are supposed to) be 
get a hump on pretty soon the White ]\Iountains will be 
"stump land only" for fair. 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 23 

N EATON, N. H. 



''Goshen." — "Potter Neighborhood." — Eaton Slandered in 
Verse. — A Pet Woodehuck. — TJie Showman's Parrot in 
the Hands of the Philistines. 



August 31, 1905. 

Mrs. John D. Legere, over in South Conway, otherwise 
known as "Goshen," owns a farm that for about fifteen 
years she carried on herself, hiring very little help, doing 
personally nearly all the work that the average farmer does 
in this section. In speaking of it to the agent, she remarked 
that as a woman always realizes the value of having a good 
supply of fuel, she always determined to have her wood 
cut and put in the shed, a year's supply ahead all the 
time. Her plan was to cut it before the snow fell in the 
fall and with her oxen haul it up to the house on the first 
sledding that came; then during the winter she Avorked it 
up and packed it in the shed in the spring. 

Over in the Potter neighborhood I came across J. P. 
Davidson and his men picking rocks off a piece of land 
just laid down. It had been so long since I had seen any 
one picking rocks that I thought it worth making a note of. 
So much of farming is done by machinery now that these 
jobs that require bending the back and grubbing the earth 
have become so unpopular as to be almost a lost art. as you 
might say. 

From here my road led up over the high hills to the 
little village of Snowville in Eaton. Eaton has a choice 
assortment of hills, from the tops of which the panorama 
of mountain and valley that spreads out around one is 
grand and beautiful. On these hills the air is wonderfully 
fine. There isn't any better air in seven states than they 
have in Eaton. I asked a man I met in the road who ap- 
peared as if he might have been a resident what sort of 
a town Eaton was anyway, and his reply follows: 



24 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

IN EATON. 

Wheu Jehovah got tired of his job, 
There remained a tremendous great gob 

Of roelis. gravel and sand 

Left over on hand, 
So he dumped it right out of his hod. 

And, friend, this is the place where it fell. 
In Eaton, I'm sorry to tell, 

The soil is so poor 

You couldn't. I'm sure, 
Though bravely you tried, raise h — 1! 

But the views and the air they are great, 
And the sunlight your craving would sate; 

With food, clothing and drink 

Fui-nished free now I think 
I could live in that town first-rate. 

Where I stopped all night in Eaton, conversation turned 
on the difference between the climate here and down in 
Georgia, as two of the comi^any present were residents of 
that state, and I had just been explaining for the benefit 
of Wiffers, a Georgian, that most of our aqueducts froze 
up last winter on account of the frigidity, and what an 
abundant ice crop we were blessed with, when he rejoined 
that in Georgia, at Savannah I think, they manufacture 
their ice and furnish 300-pound chunks of coolness for 
seventy-five cents. At times, he said, rival ice companies 
would run the price of ice down in competition till they 
would actually give it away to any who would take the 
trouble to come and get it. Now I like that idea, you 
can take it or leave it, while up here the company that 
furnishes us with ice is altogether too effusive. We have to 
take it and no excuses and protestations suffice. 

E. L. Doloff up on the hill beyond Snowville has a unique 
and cunning pet in the interesting personality of a wood- 
chuck. He was captured when about the size of a large 
rat and now he is rather larger than the ordinary bean- 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 25 

eating chuck of the corn patch, and shows every sign of 
being in prosperous and easy circumstances from a wood- 
chuck's point of view. He runs about the house and yard 
and always shows up at the kitchen table at his usual meal 
time. He has no intercourse with the common ordinary 
herd of woodchucks that inhabit the surrounding fields, 
as befits an aristocratic and self-made chuck. I presume, 
however, if he should get caught by some of the common 
herd aforesaid, away from his base, he would have to prove 
his superiority in a rough and tumble fight. There are 
probably jealousies among woodchucks the same as among 
other quadrupeds (yes, and bipeds, too!). 

This reminds me of a showman's parrot. It seems that 
after having sat on his perch for many moons and listened 
while the ticket taker had dispensed the paste board that 
admitted to the "greatest show on earth," Polly finally 
took it into his foolish head to scrape the acquaintance of 
the uneducated and plebian birds of the adjacent woods. 
He listened to the "call of the wild" to his subsequent sor- 
row. 

When his master found him he was sitting on the limb 
of a big oak, bobbing first this way, then that, surrounded 
by a crowd of black and ugly crows that were pecking at 
him viciously. He still had a few feathers remaining and 
was vociferating shrilly, "One at a time, gentlemen. Don't 
push, don't crowd. Plenty of time, gentlemen, take your 
turn. D — n it gentlemen, take your turn. Time enough. 
One at a time ! " Wild folks of the woods never take kindly 
to those of their species that have had the advantages of 
domestication. 



26 WAYSIDE NOTES. 



ALONG THE SACO. 



Elden Grover's Frost. — Anderson's 50-Cent Dollar. — Leav- 
itt's Indian Relics. — The Old Saco. 



September 5, 1905. 

The Agent meandered down the north bank of the Saco 
last week, visiting on the way Fag End, East Conway, Green 
Hill, the various parts of Chatham, Fryeburg and a part 
of Lovell, and found that up to that time the frost had 
held off and a fair corn crop appeared to be a certainty, 
the shops having already started up at North Fryeburg, 
Fryeburg and Conway Corner. I must qualify the state- 
ment just a mite in order to preserve my hard-earned 
and highly prized reputation for aljsolute and unvarying 
veracity and unsullied truth. ]\Iy friend Elden Grover 
of Green Hill, the well-known weather prophet, is said to 
have predicted a frost the last of August, and as I came 
past his place the pumpkin vines and bean tops had that 
tired and shrivelled look that indicated that Elden 's proph- 
ecy had been verified. A gentleman at Kearsarge Village 
told me that when old Kearsarge jNIountain became cloud- 
capped, the old Nick couldn't stop its raining, and when 
Elden Grover says there'll be a frost there's going to be 
one even if it has to be made to order for his special benefit. 

]\Ir. 0. Anderson, who lives at South Chatham, is some- 
thing of a wag in a way, and he was telling me about when 
he was at the county seat on the jury, he had the pleas- 
ure of listening to the Republican candidate for governor, 
bloviating on the subject of free silver, which he said was 
only worth fifty cents on the dollar when minted. A hench- 
man of the aforesaid candidate had the duty of paying off 
the jury when the business of the court had finished, and 
when he came to Mr. Andrews he passed him -out in change 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 27 

three silver dollars. Brother Andrews held the silver in 
his open palm, looked at it critically and then at the pay- 
master. "Look here, ]\Ir. Paymaster, you've made a mis- 
take, this is a dollar and a half short." "How's that I" 
demanded that functionary; "ain't that three dollars all 
right?" 

"No," says Brother Andrews positively, "according to 
your candidate for governor it ain't. He said, you recol- 
lect, that these dollars are worth only fifty cents, and so 
I'll trouble you for just one fifty more, — if — you — 
please ! ' ' But although he kept his hand out for nearly 
a minute, while the onlookers smiled a large smile, he 
didn't get the rest of his pay, and he afterwards found 
(if he didn't know it before) that Uncle Sam's money is 
worth just what it claims to be and always has been. 

D. H. Leavitt of Chatham said he would like to visit 
jNIanchester sometime and look through the museum there, 
as he understood they had a pair of snow shoes made some- 
thing like the more modern "skee," only not so long, that 
were discovered in the woods near Amoskeag many years 
ago and placed in the museum as Indian relics. He said 
the snowshoes were probably a pair he and his brother 
had made away back in the 40 's and tried to use them in 
a deep snow of that period, when they were found to be 
no good and left in the woods in disgust. "It's too bad 
to lay such a clumsy job to the redskins," said Mr. Leavitt, 
"and I want to set the archajologist of the future right 
on this point." I told him I'd do what I could in this 
matter and knowing the importance that attaches to any 
thing found in this department I herewith hasten to set 
history right. 



28 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

THE OLD SAGO. 



A good many years ago 

The Saco rau sluggish and slow, 

"Fish Street" on the right 

With "Mud City" in sight, 
Still northward its waters did flow. 

Around by the "Harbor" it went 
In search of a suitable vent. 

Then veering I'ound south 

Towards its far ocean mouth 
Like a mighty great horse-shoe it bent. 

For many and many a day 
The flood on its indolent way, 

As if lost and strayed 

On the intervales staid. 
Till the farmers thought Nick was to pay! 

One night — this was long, long ago — 

Those old farmers, whose names we don't know, 

With shovel and pick 

Cut a channel quite slick 
Where the great, sluggish river could flow. 

And now in the "Town Farm" hill 
Through this channel the river runs still; 

Straight across the horse-shoe 

The "New Saco" runs thi'ough 
And "while water runs" it will! 

Just one word for the "Old Saco's" bed — 
.Just a line for a river that's dead; 

Nevermore there shall glide 

The great pent mountain tide 
That over its intervales spread. 

Nevermore, 'tis a sad word to say ; 
In the night you were stolen away, 

And the poor empty bed 

Of a river that's dead 
Moans for you forever and aye! 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 29 

FROM SWIFT RIVER TO SANDWICH. 



Peter Gee, Blueherrij PicJicr. — Robert Drew and the Frog. 
— Big Men in Here. — The Rival Towns. 



September 13, 1905. 

Last week as the greatest storm of the season (4 2-3 
inches of rainfall) trailed off into other quarters, I made 
my Avay up the Swift River Valley and stopped at W. 
Chase Colby's over night. Mr. Colby is one of the few 
old settlers in this region and an interesting man to meet, 
and when you arrive, as I did, about eight o'clock at night, 
carrying a gnawing feeling under your vest and a weary 
feeling all over, the welcome to a farmer's home and a 
farmer's fare knocks the spots off of the most hospitable 
hotel I know. Mr. Peter Gee, whom I met there, has 
picked 801 quarts of blueberries on the bushes on Eagle 
Ledge, a foot spur of the IMoat Mountain, -this year, in 
three weeks, or over forty quarts a day. 

One gentleman, who shall be nameless, told me he picked 
"over 100 quarts up on Moat Mountain on the 29th 
day of August;" and wh^^ should I doubt his word, when 
a reference to my almanac shows conclusively that there 
was a 29th day of August; Moat INIouutain was there and 
the blueberries were there ; what more evidence do you 
want ? After doing Conway I went through South Albany, 
where I found the new Piper House, with a good comple- 
ment of guests, also the smaller houses around Choeorua, 
though the large hotel at Tamworth Village has not had 
as many an usual. ^NFy impression is that the smaller 
houses are getting the preference this season, and I am 
told that September is l)ecoming more and more a vaca- 
tion month each year. 

As I came over by Silver Lake I niet a relative of Mr. 
Robert Drew, the unlettered poet of Silver Lake, who died 



30 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

many years ago, but who is well remembered by many in 
this section, and she told me several reminiscences of her 
relative, one of which has never been mentioned, I believe, 
in these notes. 

It seems that when a young man (he lived to be over 90), 
he was employed to saw the wood pile at the school house, 
and during recess the teacher engaged him in conversa- 
tion and bantered him to do a sum in arithmetic as follows : 

If a frog jump up one foot in a well every day, and fall 
back two feet every night, how long will it take him to get 
out of the well? 

Young Drew was to have till the next day to figure it 
out. Bright and early the next morning the teacher ar- 
rived at the school house, but young Drew with his buck 
saw was there at the wood pile before her, vigorously ply- 
ing it on the large hard wood sticks. 

' ' Well, Robert, how did you succeed with your frog 1 ' ' 

"Madam," sa.ys Robert: — 

"Your sum I've tried 
Until I'm cloyed; 
No more on it I'll dwell; 
I've got your rule. 
And quit your school; 
And you'll find your frog in h — 11!" 

Many a lad — yes, and perhaps many a sweet young miss, 
too — has felt like dismissing troublesome problems in a like 
off-hand manner, but ''tain't for them"; the poet you 
know has a right to exercise poetic license where other 
mortals can't. That's why I court the muse, as you may 
say, to amuse the court, see? 

The big men are all moving into Tamworth now. Ex- 
President Grover Cleveland and "Sir. Findly are the two 
latest additions to the landed proprietors in that town and 
— I've been pricing farms some myself! Mr. Cleveland 
has bought the Francis Remick farm for $3,750 which, I 
understand, he paid spot cash for. INIaybe your readers 
would like other details about the farm. 




>(,irAM LAKK. NKAl! SANDWK li. 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 31 

This farm was probably cleared and worked first by 
Jonathan Philbrick, who was born at Bretton Woods and 
settled first on the Bear Camp intervale, moving to the 
Kemick place on Stevenson Hill in 1772. His son, Stephen 
Philbrick, was born in 1771 and lived all his life here, dy- 
ing in 1872 at the age of 102, and is said to be buried back 
of the barn on the south side of the road upon the farm 
that Mr. Cleveland has bought. 

John Remick. the father of Francis, bought the farm of 
Aaron Smith, who had bought it of the Philbricks, and oc- 
cupied it twenty-five years, November, 1865, so it has been 
in the Remick family for forty years. Of course every- 
body hopes ^Ir. Cleveland will like his new home, and that 
Sandwich will not secede from the Union because he is 
no longer a resident "in their midst." Mr. Cleveland 
is big enough for both towns : 

Up beyond the Belknap Mountains 

Lies a valley ever fair; 
And the smile of the Great Spirit 

Is resting there — is resting there! 

Down below the eternal mountains, 

Where the Bear Camp River flows, 
Towns of Sandwich and of Tamworth 

Share their triumphs and their woes. 

There's a rivalry between them, 

Though it may not come to blows; 
Tam worth's got 'im now, but Sandwich 

Perhaps can have his dirty clothes. 

Only residents of this section are supposed to know to 
w'hat the above alleged poetry refers, and I ain't saying, 
that they will know without a chart, which will be sent on 
application. 



32 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

LITTLE PITCHER'S NOTES. 



The Ajfdble Fraud. — Jerry Goodwin and Bill Dimick. — 
Where the Finger of Death Had Touched. 



That mild influence, that impelling touch, 
Nor a dight too little, nor a dight too much, 
That takes from cupidity its last shining cent, 
Nor leaves a trace of where its master went ; 
That appeals to thrift to save an extra dime. 
And vanishes before it fathoms the design. 
Ubiquitous he comes, he conquers and he goes, 
Whither and whence, that's what nobody knows! 

The above beautiful and touching lines about size up 
the situation in regard to a gentleman, we might call him 
"the man from i\Iaine," who recently blew over from 
"down east," and after "doing" Rochester came up 
through Milton, Union, Sanbornville, Wolfeboro and Os- 
sipee, and perhaps other towns, selling a couple of maga- 
zines, w^hich usually cost $1.80 for $1.00. At least he se- 
cured a number of nice large blank receipt books at some 
stationery store, and with a fountain pen full of red ink 
made out some elaborate affirmations that he had "Re- 
ceived the sum of one dollar (per head) for magazine set 
number 1"^ — whatever that might mean. Of course it was 
supposed to mean the magazines the smooth and oily gen- 
tleman was showing. Diplomas in the school of sad experi- 
ence at $1.00 apiece come rather high, but they may be 
most effective in the long run. In the meantime, if the 
gentleman with the receipt book and the winsome smile will 
only come back, "Nobody Avon't do a thing to him!" 

Dear friends, when Little Pitchers, and dozens and doz- 
ens of local workers whom you have known for years, are 
selling magazines just as low as they can, what's the use 
of tempting Providence by trying to "do a little better?" 
Let me let you into a secret. The magazines this gentle- 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 83 

man offered you cannot be secured by an agent for the 
sum he charged. Neither company of magazine publishers 
which he claimed to represent is offering any free premi- 
ums, either of music or patterns,, whatever, and both com- 
panies furnish their agents with their own printed blank 
receipts, which guarantee that the person holding them is 
an authorized agent. But then, brethren, this is useless, 
for the next bunco man will probably have an entirely new 
scheme to which these cautions will not apply. 

I came up on Jerry Goodwin's train the other day, and 
as Jerry wouldn't furnish me a seat in the smoker — stand- 
ing room only being the order of the day — I got into the 
baggage car. At Hayes, which, owing to the leather board 
mills, etc., is getting to be a lively, hustling annex to the 
city of Rochester, among other parcels of baggage were 
two dress suit cases, bearing tags for that station, but our 
genial friend, the baggage master, after putting out the 
other articles, resumed his nonchalant attitude at the desk, 
oblivious of the fact that two pieces of baggage were being 
carried by, until some distance toward Milton. Little 
Pitchers was an amused spectator, and when the baggage 
smasher remarked that the man who never made a mistake 
must be a fool, he added "or a liar," and it is even so. 
Some mistakes are worse in their consequences than others, 
but all are the result of the fallibility of the human mind, 
even at its best, and lucky it is if the only consequence of a 
mistake is the carrying by of a couple of dress suit cases. 

Speaking of Jerry Goodwin, reminds me of my friend. 
Bill Dimiek. Bill works for the road in the huml)le ca- 
pacity of a painter, and of ccmrse going up and down the 
line from his home at North Conway, rides free. Jerry 
is not in his element except he is having a little quiet fun 
with some one, and one day finding Bill seated in the 
smoker, with a number of strangers, sitting near the end 
of the car taking a quiet nap, he grabbed him !)>• the shoul- 
der and demanded in a voice designed to reach the length 

4 



34 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

of the car: "Where's your ticket?" Bill hadn't got any. 
"Got any money?" "Yes, sir," says Bill. "Well, pay 
your fare, then, and be quick about it!" This latter with 
a threatening" glower which heightened the interest of the 
on-lookers quite a little. "I won't!" says Bill doggedly. 
"Well, by gings, then you get otf at the next station, un- 
derstand?" and Bill apparently bowed to the inevitable. 
But he didn't get off, and when Jerry came through the 
next time, the other passengers expected to see trouble for 
the obdurate passenger. Jerry came along down the aisle 
till Bill's seat was reached. Bill was again fast asleep, 
apparently. Jerry started back in surprise, then reached 
over and grabbed Bill's collar, shouting, "Wake up there, 
old man!" Bill woke up as ordered. "Didn't I tell you 
to get off?" "Yes, sir, you did!" affirmed Bill. "Well, 
why didn't you do it?" Shaking a threatening finger in 
his face, ' ' Now, the next stop you get off — see ? " As that 
was Bill's destination he didn't see fit to dispute Jerry's 
statement and the other passengers heaved a sigh of re- 
lief, or disgust, according as they viewed the prospect of 
a fellow mortal striking the cold, unfeeling station plat- 
form with one of those old-fashioned "dull, sickening 
thuds." 

Coming over by the Pineriver Road that curves around 
the base of Green Mountain, I called at the well remem- 
bered home of Joseph S. Smith, where several times in the 
last ten years I have been entertained over night. Crape 
was on the door, the black sleigh of the undertaker was 
before it, and in the house and yard were sympathizing 
and sorrowing friends. With the funeral director I went 
in to take a last look at the face of my deceased friend. 
Beside me was a friend of his boyhood with frame shaken 
with emotion ; about me were the sorrowing members of the 
family circle. The wife whom he tenderly nursed for 
years lay in the little granite encircled burying ground 
below the tall pines of the towering Green Mountain, and 
today they were taking him out there to lie in peace beside 







Ami yi' who arc liviiiji sliall thirst and lack 
The wliilc \vc arc icstiiiif tlirrc." 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 36 

her. As I sadly wended my way up through the unbroken 
snow of the unfrequented mountain road to Lord's Hill, 
my thought took form as follows: 

I've been where the fini^er of death has touched 

And gathered tlie ripened grain; 
I've looked on that pallid face and said: 

"This is the end of pain." 
I've been where the finger of death has touched 

And gone on my way again. 

But some day the finger of death will come, 

Sealing this heart of mine; 
And the voice will speak to my ear alone: 

"My beloved, come ; it is time." 
And the voice that shall speak to me alone 

I know, dear Lord, will be thine. 

And then I shall go on the long, long track. 

To a land my God knows where; 
I shall go like him, and shall not come back ; 

I shall rest, and I shall not care. 
And ye who are living shall thirst and lack. 

The while we are resting there. 



AT SIXTY-SIX. 



The following poem was sent to Mr. Hobbs of Hampton 
on his 66th birthday and used in the Exeter News Letter: 

The years fly swiftly with us all 

And life is all too brief; 
But we should all, both great and small, 

Hold joy and let go grief. 

For to us all the sorrows come, 

And to us all comes joy. 
iSo let us take the swwts of life, — 

Forget wliat may annoy. 



36 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

And when we come to sixty-six, 
As our friend does to-day, 

May we like him have learned the tricks 
Which drive grief and care away. 

And while we cherish memory 
And all virtues ever sung, 

May we like him in spirit be 
Just sixty-six years young. 



NOTES FROM FREEDOM. 



The Bald-Headed Blacksmith. — Harmon's Story of Robert 
Drew. — Roland Park and Uncle Neal's Yellow Cat. — 
Oliver Brown's Old Mare "That Wouldn't Back."— 
Drew's Verses. 



I have been pursuing the even tenor of my way around 
and about old Carroll County during the week since I last 
w^rote you, and while I can't report anything particularly 
new, I certainly have no evil report to bring. 

The most remarkable thing I have heard of is the new 
crop of hair that has begun to grow on that bald-headed 
blacksmith's head up at six-mile pond. It is declared for 
a fact that a luxuriant and downy mess has sprung up all 
over his bald knob, of a fascinating brick shade, that is 
the envy of all the girls in Madison. Too bad he's mar- 
ried ! This phenomenon is interesting to me, because Lit- 
tle Pitchers is getting just a mite scarce of hair on his 
intellectual dome himself — or perhaps we should say our- 
self — and when we see Baldy we are going to find out 
what did it, if possible. 

I was over Lord's Hill in Effingham last Aveek and 
chanced to get into conversation with H. W. Harmon, who 
was formerly a resident here but has for many years been 
engaged in business down country. When a boy he said 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 37 

he remembered Uncle Robert Drew, the versatile and witty 
character to whom I have referred in these notes before. 
"When a boy," he said, "and living at home, I remember 
once my father heard that Mr. Drew was cutting hay on 
a farm owned by my uncle up in Madison, and thinking to 
safeguard his interests, as he was away down country on 
business at the time, he took me along and drove up to 
the Madison farm, one hot day in July, to see what IMr. 
Drew was doing. When we came to the meadow we found 
]\Ir. Drew and his youngest boy busily engaged in spread- 
ing out a lot of grass they had just cut down on my uncle's 
land. Robert greeted my father warmly, and asked him to 
come over into the shade of the trees and sit down while 
he ate his dinner, as it was about noon. We went over, 
and after talking of various matters, my father finally 
got around to the object of his visit. 'Mr. Drew,' said he, 
' you don 't own this land you are working on here, do you ? ' 
'Oh no, no! This isn't my land, Mr. Harmon,' replied 
Robert. 'It belongs to your brother.' 'Well, how comes 
it you are cutting this grass, Mr. Drew?' 'Well,' says 
Robert. 'I'll tell you ; you see it was this way: Your brother 
came up to my place one day last spring, and he saw my 
little boy there playing about the house, and he kept a 
saying kind of softly to himself, "My God, my God, what 
can I do! What can I do!" I couldn't think what to 
make of him and finally I asked him what was the matter. 
"Look here, Mr. Drew," says he, "you been stealing my 
timber off 'm my land here for more than twenty years and 
I haven't said a word, for I knew you had a family grow- 
ing up and needed it. but I thought now they were all up 
out of the way, and I came over to notify you to quit, but 
here I find is another young one coming up and I don't 
know what to do. " " See here, ' ' he says kind of sudden like, 
' ' if you '11 keep out of my timber you can have all the grass 
you want down there in my meadow." And that's why 
I'm down here, squire,' said Robert, as he took a fresh 
chew of tobacco. And as Rol)ert seemed to be honest about 



38 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

it, father accepted the situation good naturedly and we left 
for home." 

It is said that on one occasion Daniel Webster, on a 
trip to the White Mountains by team, met and got into con- 
versation with jMr. Drew on the blueberry plains near Six- 
mile Pond, and was so amused and interested by his con- 
versation that he spent a half day in his company, and no 
doubt regaled him with what he had under the carriage 
seat. 

One night this week I spent at Koland Park, overlook- 
ing Dan Hole Pond, or Lake Dauhole, at the foot of the 
Ossipees, and which place in fair weather commands a fine 
view of Mount Washington, thirty or forty miles away. 
Quiet, secluded, but easy of access, its nearly thirty cot- 
tages and two large boarding houses are filled each season 
and the summer population is constantly growing. I have 
to record, however, that one of the attractions of the park 
is probably no more. I say probably, as I know of a case 
where a large brown dog was shot to death and dragged 
out to a gravel pit, and showing signs of life, was beaten 
to death with a shovel, and then buried under six inches 
of earth and in about six weeks came limping back to the 
house, a little groggy, but still in the ring, as the sporting 
papers say. This attraction was Uncle T. R. Neal's large 
yellow cat. This cat, while not exactly a weather lireeder, 
was depended on to foretell the approach of winter, as he 
would go away in the spring, and remain in the woods in 
the vicinity all through the summer, often seen but seldom 
caught, and along into the fall, till just as winter sets in 
for keeps, when he would return to the house. This fall 
it was deemed desirable to reduce the cat population by one 
on account of his excursions into forbidden places, and he 
was chloroformed, but unlike Uncle John Sanborn's pet 
dog, Nellie, up at Gushing 's Corner, last week, he took the 
dose philosophically, and after lying dormant, if not door- 
mat, for several hours, he got up and went off. Being re- 
captured they tried the water cure on him, tying him in a 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 



39 



bag with a stone for a sinker, but it must have come untied, 
for a day or two later he was seen lurking about the prem- 
ises, and this time a shotgun was brought into requisition, 
and it is believed that with a good share of his jaw blown 
off he has received his quietus. Although he has escaped to 
the woods and has not since been, seen, there is no certainty 
that the cat will not come back. 

At the comfortable boarding house of L. L. Farnham 
& Co., I met and conversed with the venerable T. R. Neal, 
referred to above, and, among other things, he told me a 
story of Oliver Brown, who used to live on Brown's Ridge, 
south of Ossipee Comer, where ]\Ir. Adams now lives, and 
Adam Brown, his brother, lived near by. Oliver, it seems, 
had a black mare, Janette by name, that became old and 
lazy and fat, and he decided to kill her. So one day in 
the late fall he took her out into the pasture, away from 
the house, and knocked her in the head. Now Janette was 
a good and docile beast, but she had one failing— she 
wouldn't back. This was known to all people in that vi- 
cinity. When she had ceased her struggles, Oliver, noting 
that she w^as good and plump, determined to have a steak 
out of her, and so he cut about a dozen pounds of juicy 
horse meat from her hind quarter, and took it home. A 
day of two later, he invited Adam over to dinner, and had 
him try some of that steak, which was pronounced the best 
he ever ate, and w^ouldn't rest till he had learned where 
Oliver got it. After several evasive replies, Oliver finally 
owned up that Adam had been feasting on a hind quarter 
of poor old Janette. Horrified he Avent to the door on a 
run, and tried to throw up his dinner, with Oliver close 
behind. "Adam," says he, "don't you know that poor old 
Janette never was known to back?" And she didn't begin 
then, though Adam tried various methods to accomplish the 
result, and never forgave Oliver for feeding him on horse 
meat. 

I will close with one more anecdote of Robert Drew, or at 
least, attributed to him by a gentleman who claimed to 



40 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

know. He called at a house one day at the noon hour to 
get some dinner, and was informed by the matron that 
her poor old mother had just died and she was trying to 
think of an appropriate verse for her tombstone. ' * Madam, 
I can make you a verse, I think, ' ' said Mr. Drew. ' ' What 
was your mother's name?" "Mary," was the reply. 
"Ah, yes, a good old Bible name," said Robert. "How will 
this do: 

"Mother Mary died of late 
And went direct to Peter's gate." 

"That will do for two lines," said the daughter, "but 
what will go with it ? I want four. " " Well, ' ' said Robert, 
"I'll give you the other two after dinner." Dinner was 
duly discussed, and as Robert rose to leave the house, the 
daughter requested the other two lines. "Oh, yes," said 
Robert, "I most forgot; here they are: 

"St. Peter met her with a club 
And sent her back to Belzebub." 

And then he faded away. 



THE HONEST FORESTER. 



He was an Honest Forester, 

And he dwelt one of three, 
Within the shadow of a wood 

P>eneath a great elm tree. 
He had a strong and mighty arm, 

He had a telling stroke. 
And with his shining blade he cleft 

The heart of many au oak. 
His neighbors they were shiftless men, 

Most shiftless drones were they. 
Who never bad an extra stick 

In the fireplace to lay. 
So now our Honest Forester, 

For twenty-seven years 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 41 

His back pile never had he used, 

But only the front tiers. 
At last a winter long and cold 

Had settled on the earth, 
The snow was overwhelming deep, 

Of wood there was a dearth. 
His neighbors burned their fences up. 

And fodder from the mow. 
And then they came to borrow. 

But he couldn't spare it now, 
For when he reached his rearmost pile. 

Amazed was he to mark. 
The worms had powdered every stick 

And only left the bark. 



IN THE OSSIPEE COUNTRY. 



Friends Gone On. — David Hohhs' Story About Uncle Steve 
Allard. — Ezra Dodge Case. — Picking Vp. 



I was up through Ossipee Valley lately — some call it Bear 
Camp, some Jehosaphat, and the genial conductor, Jerry 
Goodwin, calls it Free Silverville, on account of its having 
been the residence of the able exponent of the theory of 
William J. Bryan, F. K. Hobbs, postmaster and station 
agent until his recent sudden death, who was so well known 
politically as a campaigner of many years as to need no 
introduction to Pioneer readers, but whose death is greatly 
lamented. 

I did not meet Mr. Helme, the elder whose meetings were 
so disturbed by roughs last summer as to horrify the Boston 
correspondents, and send a spasm throughout New Eng- 
land, but I saw a good many others, as I have done in my 
travels tlirough here for ten years past, and so far as my ob- 
servation goes, there is no more quiet and law-abiding 
people in America than right among and around the Ossi- 
pee Mountains of New Hampshire. 



42 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

I visited West Ossipee, where I learned that the day be- 
fore all that was mortal of E. D. Whitehouse, the veteran 
hotel man, had been returned to mother earth. The fu- 
neral was, I believe, held at Chick meeting house in Os- 
sipee, and there, in the quiet graveyard, his body rests not 
far from where his earthly career began. For some time 
before his death, ]\Ir. Whitehouse had entertained a curi- 
ous fancy that he was away from home, and frequently ex- 
pressed a desire to return. A fancy, we may say, and yet 
a reality ; else why do we instinctively say, as we fold the 
tired hands of our loved ones on the unthrobbing breast, 
' ' They have gone home ' ' ? 

Up by Blackman's mill, another old friend of mine and 
of the Pioneer has joined the silent majority. He was 
not a man in life who cared to be with the majority. A free 
thinker, a liberal, a Socialist, a man of large frame, large 
heart, and large ideas, Alvah Moore, with better school ad- 
vantages and a different environment, might have shone 
with as much luster as Garrison and Philips. He died as 
he lived, looking for the dawn of the brighter day on this 
earth wherein shall dwell righteousness. 

At Chocorua I put up with my friend, David Hobbs, 
who lived when a boy up in Albany near the Swift River, 
and not far from the domicile of the noted bear hunter of 
former days, Stephen Allard. Indeed, he was so near that 
Uncle Stephen held an idea that IMr. Hobbs had squatted 
on his land. One day Mr. Hobbs and his family had oc- 
casion to go down the trail through the woods to a neigh- 
bor's, and in doing so he chanced to meet Mr. Allard, who 
at once began to point out to ]\Ir. Hobbs, in shrill and un- 
mistakable accents, what he should and should not do as 
regards cutting any stick of timber, planting any corn, po- 
tatoes, or pasturing or otherwise occuping any of said 
premises described, to wit : viz, what he called his farm. 
As ^Ir. Hobbs had pretty good proof that he had a right 
to his land, he grew indignant at the tongue lashing, and 
finally grabbing up a club said: ''Look here, Steve Al- 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 43 

lard, I've heard enough (tf this, and don't you let another 
word out of your head, or I '11 give you a taste of this stick. ' ' 
"Well, well, well, well," says Steve, "don't you strike me, 
:\Ir. Hobbs, or I'll show you the law, by mighty I will." 
As Mr. Allard's flow of language dried up in regard to 
agrarian rights, Mr. Hobbs did not proceed any further 
with his club, and in after days the two men became firm 
friends. I cannot say as much, however, for a certain Mv. 
Stratton, of whom ]\Ir. Hobbs told me, because I don't 
know. It seems that Mr. Stratton had cut. burned and 
cleared a patch of land in the Albany wilderness, near 
Mr. Allard's, and had sowed the same to grain, which in 
the late summer he was duly cutting up with a sickle, when 
who should appear on the scene but Uncle Steve ; Mr, 
Stratton was some surprised, but he was not only surprised 
but wrathy when the old man ordered him to quit cutting 
the grain, claiming it was on his land. Running up to him 
and brandishing his sickle close to the old man's neck he 
dared him to repeat what he had said. "Well, well, well, 
well, Mr. Stratton," shrilled Uncle Steve in his high 
pitched voice, "don't you touch me with that sickle, or I'll 
show you the law, by mighty I will." Uncle Steve, how- 
ever, kept his law to himself, and Mr. Stratton completed 
his harvesting in peace. 

They say the devil always leaves a bar down, but if he 
does no one has found it in the case of Ezra Dodge, whose 
body lay dead in his o^vn door yard for two or three months 
before it was discovered and buried, three years or more 
ago. A Boston clairvoyant described the murderer and 
referred to a tin box of papers that would be found in the 
cellar, at the time ; but though the box was found the papers 
were missing, and up to date, no one has been apprehended 
as the slayer of the eccentric old man. 

I spent a night recently with my friend. Bill Dimick, at 
North Conway, and his young son, Walter, a lad of nine or 
ten, was laboriously inditing an epistle to his teacher in the 
district school. Asking for a pointer as to what he should 



44 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

write that would be interesting, I suggested that he tell her 
that he proposed to be a good boy during the next term of 
school. "Yes," said he naively, "but I don't like to tell 
lies!" 



PICKING UP. 



As I swing around the country, oh! 

There's business picking up. 
If any one should aslv you. oh ! 

Just say it's picli:ing up! 
The rag man and the paper man 

Have work enough to do. 
There's drummers, drummers on each hand 

All looking out for you. 
The grangers soon will have a show, 

The church a festival. 
The Sunday school has needs, you know, 

That on your pockets call ; 
The sisters dear, God bless 'em all. 

With all their dark designs, 
Will ask you for a tribute small; 
* Your pockets must be mines! 
And whichsoever w^ay you turn 

There's evidence enough * 
That everybody's business is 

Picking up the stuff I 
There's business picking up, my friends, 

Business picking up, 
If anybody asks, just say. 

There's business picking up. 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 45 

A FRESH STORY OR TWO. 



Charlie" Fhilbrick of Chicago, Andrew Welch and the 
Know-Nothings. — The Blacksmith's Helper. — Life's 
Tides. 



As there is a fresh story or two in my grip, I think I'll 
give your readers just one more inJ3ietion this time, by 
your leave, Brother Dorr. 

I got off at Centerville, which Jerry persists in calling 
Center Ossipee, spite of everything I can say, and went by 
way of the new road, which parallels the railroad track one 
mile south, then w^est by Chick meeting house and through 
"Hackney" to Water Village, and put up at one of the 
best appointed sets of farm buildings in the county, owned 
by Levi AV. Brown. I had never stopped there before, and 
at the risk of never stopping there again I am going to re- 
late an incident connected with a trip to the Chicago 
World's Fair made by Mr. Brown, his wife, and ''Life" 
Connor and wife of Exeter. Said ]Mr. Brown : "Life and 
I were interested in cattle, and ^\e just couldn't leave Chi- 
cago without visiting the stock yards, and as we knew that 
Charlie Philbrick from Hampton was buyer for the Swift 
Company, we went over to the yards to look him up. Sev- 
eral men we met didn 't seem to understand us, and had the 
look of foreigners anyway, but we ran across a bright lit- 
tle boy who at once said he knew Charlie, and if we would 
get up onto the fence (the place consisted of innumerable 
passages and yards enclosed by high fences and swinging 
gates), he would go and send him round to us. In a few 
minutes several hundred head of cattle from the plains 
came roaring down the passage way where we had been, 
and behind them came Charlie. He didn't notice us un- 
til, as the noise of the hundreds of hoofs died awaj--, Life 
drawled out, 'Say, Charlie, have ye got a farrow cow ter 
sell?' An uiimistaka])lo whiff from Yankeeland. and a sur- 



46 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

prised look stole over Charlie's face, till he saw us on the 
fence. Well, yes, he was giad to see us, and took us up to 
the stable, where, after protestations that we hadn't rode a 
horse for twenty years, we were provided with mounts and 
went out and watched Charlie buy cattle by the carload 
with as much quickness and despatch as is sometimes used 
in the purchase of four-weeks veal calf out here. The drov- 
ers sometimes kicked at the prices, but finally ended by ac- 
cepting them." Note: They probably realized that the 
big companies were running the meat business for their 
board and clothes and wanted to help them out in their 
praiseworthy philanthropy. 

I called on Uncle Andrew Welch over in Tuftonborough, 
and he told me a yarn which, as I didn't write it down at 
the time, may be a little twisted, but nevertheless ought to 
contribute to the gaiety of nations and hurt no one : An- 
drew and Jack Thompson were not know-nothings in the 
antibellum days, no-sir-ree! But they had an intense de- 
sire to find out what "them fellers" were cutting up at 
their secret conclaves, and b'gosh they were going to, too. 
So when they heard that there was to be a meeting in John 
Lamprey's hog pen, they proceeded to get there first, and 
to avoid detection they crawled in with the hogs in a dark 
comer of the pen. The meeting was duly pulled off and 
Jack and Andy got the secret rap at the outer and inner 
doors, and the password, and also learned that the next 
meeting would be at Jim Libbey's, over near Mackerel 
Comer. When the time came for the meeting the two spies 
started out, but before they had gone far Jack's courage 
failed him, and I '11 let Andrew tell the rest. ' ' We went back 
to my house and got some hard cider and sat awhile, and 
then started out. When we got to Jim's we were met at 
the door and gave the knocks and the passwords all right, 
and got into Jim's big kitchen, which was full of men, 
young and old, some of whom we knew and some we didn 't. 
Now we had heard that one of the rites of the secret meet- 
ings was the climbing of a greased pole, feet first, by Doc 




Mplv'm Village. 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 47 

Seavery, and Jack, the tarnal fool, was just drunk enough 
so't he believed it, and he blinked round a few minutes 
an ' then blurted out, ' Say, fellers, whare 's th ' greased pole, 
hie ! that Doc Seavery 's goin ' ter climb ? ' That knocked us 
higher 'n a cocked hat an' we were hustled out lively, so 
we didn't learn any more secrets of the order." 

I also stopped at a new place at Melvin Village this week 
with Mr. and Mrs. D. J. Hersey. Mrs. Hersey told me of 
a blacksmith who, I believe, formerly ran a shop at j\Iel- 
vin. who stuttered, and he also had a helper who stuttered. 
He had taught the boy a few things about the shop, and one 
morning gave him a sledge hammer, and after heating a bar 
of iron to the proper pitch gave the boy the order to: 

"S-s-s-s-strike!" 

" Wh-wh-wh-where shall I s-s-s-strike ? " yelled the boy. 

"Oh, darn, it's cold!" remarked the disgusted vulcan 
as he placed the iron back in the forge. 

Mrs. Hersey also told me about an amusing epitaph she 
saw in a cemetery at her girlhood home at Norwood, Mass. 
As a child she and her girl friends used to hunt among the 
ancient stones of the church yard for quaint verses, and 
this was one: 

"Here lies the wife of Roger Martin. 
She was a good wife to Roger, sartin." 

One would think the above was make-up if it were not 
vouched for. 

]Mrs. Hersey is the local correspondent for the Wolfeboro 
paper, and as such wrote that: "The church and parson- 
age has been much improved by the recent repairs, and now 
Melvin A^illage has no reason to blush for either church or 
parsonage." She was somewhat surprised upon getting 
her next paper to find that the words "to blush" had been 
left out. with a result disastrous to the intended meaning, 
and apologies and explanations were in order. 



48 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

LIFE'S TIDES. 



There are subtle waves in our mental sea, 
There are depths of murky night, 

There are calms where sunken vessels be 
That once were so fair to the sight. 

And as I look back on the dimming track, 

I wonder whence and where 
Came the tide that sundered our ships — Alac! 

And bore us here and there. 

But the tide that has passed will not return, 

Though other tides may come ; 
There is naught to regret, for we live to learn 

Life's lessons one by one. 

Lord, when will the school be done? 



WHEN DAD RUNS THE SEP.4RATOR. 



When Dad runs the separator 
He's an awful noise creator. 
As it twangs and twangs away, 
Very early in the day. 

Yes, by jings, it's mighty early in the morning. 

One can't get another blink 'er 
Sleep to sooth his tired winker. 
So he might as well skiddoo 
"When Dad begins, I'm telling you. 
His daily exercises in the morning. 

He gives out it's his "piany," 
But that don't help it any; 
It's worse than a durn'd buzz saw, 
Or a donkey's soulful he-haw. 

When Dad runs the separator in the morning. 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 



49 



Newfound Lal-e.—What Some Men Will Do with a Pen- 
cil and a Block of Paper.— New Hampton, the old In- 
stitution.— Old Man Smith.— Cultivate the Poetry in You. 



June 14, 1906. 
Gentle Readers: I have just crawled out of Newfound 
Lake and am stopping at my friend :\Ierriirs in East 
Hebron for the night. I was warned by ]\Irs. M. that there 
wouldn't be much to eat if I staid, but if three nice fresh 
eggs, a bar of "Johnny cake," two slices of delicious bread, 
strawberries and cream, a cup of tea, a glass of milk with 
the cream in it, jelly sandwiches, cookies and pure spring 
water in abundance is not much, then I am a light eater. 
There was plenty more in reach. 

It is wonderful what some men will do with a pencil stub 
and a block of paper. When I got this I'm writing on 
it was with an indistinct idea that the Enterprise readers 
might still care to hear from "Old Man Claflin" (that's 
what I heard a kid calling me lately). Of course I'm just 
as young as I ever was — or nearly so. I enjoy my swim in 
the lake the same as ever (tho' somehow the water holds 
pretty cold this spring). I can do twenty miles a day, if 
I don't make my stories too long when selling "the best lo- 
cal paper in the country," and I can do a turn at baseball 
with some husky youth to run for me. True I'm getting 
considerable of a Dutch shape, "five feet one way and four 
feet 'tother." My noble forehead is gradually extending 
towards the back of my neck and those lines of thought 
around my classic eyes and elsewhere are getting steadily 
more pronounced, but that doesn't make a young man of 
forty-three old, does it? I answer, no! So 'tisn't neces- 
sary for you, gentle reader, to "butt in." True, since last 
I addressed the readers of the Enterprise I've exchanged 
my "widowhood" for a widow and five children (I had 



5 



50 . WAYSIDE NOTES. 

five myself). But are we not enjoined to see after the 
widow and the fatherless, and I suppose a widow should 
also look after the widower and the motherless. That's 
right, too! It is true as reported, that between us we've 
got two handsome grandsons as you ever saw, but what of 
that? You can't pretend that shoving a man into the 
grand dad class makes him old, can you ? I guess not ! 
Gentle reader, a man is as young as he feels, and while I 
used to consider a portly gentleman with a bald head as 
rather old some years ago, I can now see where I made my 
mistake; it was all in the point of view. See? 

Last Monday after a brief call at the office, I went down 
the hill and across the covered bridge over the bawling 
Pemigewasset and so over the hill road to New Hampton. 
I never reached New Hampton by any other. Calm and 
quiet the village lay on both sides of ''Jordan's" stream 
and the students were preparing for Commencement Day 
with foolscap by the ream. That night the air was all too 
still, the mercury ran too low, and the garden truck below 
the hill was frosted white as snow. But where the "grey 
eagle's" eerie lies, and the hills that there abound, fanned 
by the warm breath from the skies, quite free from frost 
w^ere found. I've travelled North, I've travelled East, 
I've been to Jericho, but ne'er for my eyes a richer feast 
than the Pinnacle can show. The mountain ranges rank on 
rank encircle it afar, while here and there a silver lake 
gleams like a fallen star. 

It's rather tough footing it over these magnificent hills, 
but my automobile is out of repair and my medical adviser 
says walking is good for me; anyway, I don't feel very 
badly about it and as I chew a toothpick and gaze at my 
vanishing stub of a pencil. I wonder if necessity wasn't 
the mother of philosophy as well as invention. 

I went to Ashland from the Pinnacle by way of 
the "Old Institution," meeting at the home of A. F. Dol- 
loff a gentleman whom 7 should call old. His name is 
Jeremiah Smith and his age is ninetv-seven. He lives in 



WAYSIDE NOTES. ^^ 



the neighborhood and happened to be calling on Mr. Dolloff 
at the same time I did. Mr. Smith has a couple of nieces 
living at Ashland and in a recent letter to them he told 
them he hadn't much to write and felt more like the Irish- 
man who had stolen a couple of letters and was in doubt 
which one to send to his mother and which to his sister. 
Pretty good joke for an almost centenarian. Grass and 
all kinds of forest trees have grown finely this spring on 
account of the abundance of rain. This is particularly 
fortunate, owing to the fact that all over the state much 
grass was' winter-killed and but for the favorable weather 
for grass the crop would have been a short one. INIay I 
note^in passing, gentle readers, that a whippoorwill is just 
now trilling me a song from his place in the edge of the 
woods across the way? The quiet landscape around old 
Newfound 's placid waters is wrapped in the shadows of 
approaching night. How soothing the scene! Much that 
is best in life doesn't cost us a cent. Ever think of it? 
No? Well, it's time you did. This is not preaching; it's 
plain common sense. 

The man who is too occupied with the dull details of 
tis work to listen to a bird song now and then, or be 
awed by the majesty of a tempest or impressed by the 
beauty of a sunset, or the grandeur of a night full of stars, 
is in a bad way and losing the best part of his life. 

Gentle readers, cultivate the poetry in you. There is 
more to be admired in old Cardigan IMountain and the 
cliffs of Sugar Loaf than in a forty-story sky-scraper. 
The flight of a wild goose beats any invention" for speed 
and beauty of motion that man has yet invented and there's 
always a lot to learn from the open book of Nature. Did 
you ever notice that the men and women who live the long- 
est and stay young and fresh are the ones who are always 
studying into things, taking a human and wholesome inter- 
est in what passes before their eyes? That attitude of 
mind with wholesome tastes as to hours of retiring, food 
and drinks is what keeps them young in thought, virile 



52 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

and vigorous. I don't know of any one that wants to grow 
old and get into the has-been class, so I deem the above 
hints will be interesting, if not wholly new. 



MORE NOTES. 



Charlie Watts' Stories of Jack Ames. — Gensing Warning. 
— Notice of Brother Sleeper. — A Mean Man. 



Charlie Watts, who lives up in Groton and used to re- 
side over in Gilford near the lake (Winnipesaukee), told 
me several anecdotes of an odd character who lived near 
Belknap Mountain years ago named Jake Ames. You know 
that people will tell stories sometimes without any inten- 
tion to deceive, but after awhile they get so they actually 
believe them themselves. Jake said he went fishing one 
time in the lake and he kept getting hold of a tremendous 
great fish and losing his hook and line on him, and also a 
pole or two. So at last he went over to the blacksmith shop 
and had a hook made, attached to a rope, which he figured 
a yoke of oxen couldn't break, and baited it with a pig's 
liver. Well, he hadn't fished long before the monster came 
up and swallowed the bait, hook and all. Uncle Jake took 
a turn 'round a yellow birch that stood handy, and in about 
half an hour the convulsions of the big salmon ceased and 
he was pulled ashore. He was eleven feet long and his 
head and tail dragged on the ground as Jake walked home 
with him, while his feet sunk clean up to his ankles in the 
hard clay road, he was so heavy. 

Uncle Jake had no use for style and he had a steel knife 
and fork that he had used sixty years without washing; 
after each meal he would simply draw each handy tool 
through his mouth and stick them in a crack in the beam 
over his table. When his wooden dishes got so gummed 
up he couldn't scrape it off he got him a new set, as wood 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 53 

was plenty. He had a yoke of steers that were his special 
pride, and once when they had a town fair in Gilford Uncle 
Jake claimed that he hitched on to a big rock near the 
"four corners" and turned it half way round, after forty 
yoke of his neighbors' oxen had failed to budge it. Every- 
body loves a cheerful liar and tales of prowess never lost 
anything in re-telling. 

Japheth Gray, who lives close up to the great bare sides 
of old Cardigan Mountain, told me that when a boy, and 
soon after the terrible fires had swept every vestige of tree 
life and vegetable mold from the eternal ledges, the boys 
of the neighborhood used to, for a diversion, scale the sum- 
mit of the mountain and with levers and bars roll the 
numerous boulders down the mountain side, which he said 
accounted for the fact that few boulders remain there. I 
had just been conjecturing that the ancient glaciers did it 
before the arrival of man on the scene, but Japheth cor- 
rected me. 

Some one along the road a mile from Mr. Gray's has put 
up a sign warning people not to dig "gensing" in his woods. 
Gentle reader, do you happen to know what gensing is? 
It is a plant that looks some like sarsaparilla. It is worth 
a fabulous price because, mainly, of its market in China, 
where they believe it has marvelous powers in preserving, 
lengthening and making successful the life of the eater 
thereof. It is a good deal like the well known American 
fetish "gin sling." They take it when sick to make them 
well. They take it when well and it makes them sick. 
They take it to make them feel rich, and when rich it often 
makes them poor. When cold they take it to warm them, 
and when hot they consider it a means of keeping cool, 
M'hen really "gin sling" is not as good as water for an 
everyday drink. The heathen Chinese Avith his ginseng 
fetish is not the only deluded mortal one meets by any 
means, but he cheerfully sticks to his theories and parts 
with his good money for what grows wild in our forest 
deUs. 



54 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

A young gentleman of only seventy-nine, who lives over 
in Alexandria and has occupied the same farm there for 
forty years, told me that when he bought it it only cut one 
ton of haj^ (there are four acres), and now it cuts three. 
As this is making three blades of grass grow where only 
one grew before, I don't see why Mr. S. B. Sleeper isn't 
a public benefactor, and I cheerfully comply with his re- 
quest to work his name into my wayside notes. The aged 
resident of a community like Alexandria hasn't got so 
much in the way of achievement to boast of as we who live 
in bigger towns, who can tell of the wonders of man's in- 
vention that have grown up under our eyes, but what Na- 
ture has done and is doing is always worthy of mention. 
The gentleman who told me recently about a farm in Rhode 
Island that produces ten tons of hay to the acre per year 
is a more picturesque story teller, but does not possess the 
element that makes for credibility^ while Brother Sleeper 
does. 

Mrs. M. B. Patten, where I stopped near the Protile Falls 
recently, told me of a man almost as mean — yes, quite — 
as the one who hired his little boy to go to bed without his 
supper by giving him a cent, and then after he was asleep 
stole the cent. It was a Mr. Pearson, who lived over near 
Austin Corbin's father in Grantham many years ago. His 
wife died and he put his children out among the farmers, 
as he thought he couldn't care for them. One boy was 
taken by Mr. Corbin. Mr. Pearson afterwards married 
again, and in the course of time went to see how this boy 
was getting on. The poor little fellow was almost dead 
with homesickness, and when his father finally started for 
home the boy begged to go with him. Being sternly re- 
fused, the poor little fellow clung on to the rear of his 
father's wagon, from which the brute dislodged him with 
vigorous blows of his whip over the head and shoulders. 
Who said our grandfathers were not chivalrous men? 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 55 

ANOTHER BATCH OF NOTES. 



The Chicken Thief.— The Scrap Book Faddist.— Farms for 
Sale_ — Q^ 0. Stevens' Predictions. — A Community of De- 
serted Homes. 



I run across in my travels occasionally some one who has 
a good idea along some line that might — about this time — 
as the Farmers' Almanac observes, be of interest to those 
whom it may concern. For instance, Mr. J. R. Sleeper of 
Bridgewater, a gentleman of eighty bleak winters and more 
or less remarkable summers, informed me that the disgust- 
ing familiarity and sangfroid with which the common, or- 
dinary, little, darned, striped, American skunk of com- 
merce (good for his oil and pelt) had invaded his chicken 
coops and appropriated over thirty of his most promising 
chicks, had driven him to invent a skunk-proof coop, as he 
believed. It is a large dry-goods box, with poles for roosts 
running from side to side of the interior, having a roosting 
capacity of about fifty chicks, I believe, according to size. 
A slide door at one side admits the- chicks and when they 
are all in the door is secured, and a wire screen admits air, 
but not skunks. Mr. Sleeper is of the opinion that skunks 
are on the increase "in our midst," but "I dunno." 
Sometimes when I chase down a "constant reader" of the 
local paper who is owing for eight or ten years and he puts 
up a plea that he "never signed" for it and don't intend to 
pay for it, I feel that possibly :Mr. Sleeper is right. This, 
dear reader, does not refer to any one not abundantly able 
to pay, nor to anyone who ever really asked to have it 
stopped. 

Moses F. Little of Hill, since retiring from active business 
a few years ago, or perhaps a little before that, has been col- 
lecting poetry and compiling scrapbooks. He has rising 
28,000 pieces, in eight or ten large volumes, and it is a 



56 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

matter of speculation with me whether, if capital punish- 
ment is abolished, the compulsory reading of this poetry 
would be more drastic and effective as a deterrent of crime. 
Some poetry is a crime, but there is some that is really good 
— now mine for instance — but I refrain from expressing my 
opinion and don't ask for yours. Anyhow, Mr. Little has 
a big contract if he expects to capture all the poetry afloat. 

I called in at a barber shop in Hill and George H. Twom- 
bly was tonsuring me in a neat and tasty manner while 
Elder Rice was patiently waiting, when some remark of 
mine stirred up the tonsorial artist to break out with "Now, 
gentlemen, this ain't no lie I am about to tell ye, but when 
I was a boy and lived at home, there was a man lived near 
us that sowed a piece to barley one spring, and when it 
was up about four inches I '11 be durned if the pesky sheep 
didn't get in and eat it right down to the ground. It was 
rather late to do anything with it then, and as it was over 
back of the sheep pasture they put the fence up and didn 't 
go near it till the end of haying, when they were surprised 
to find that a nice crop of oats had grown up on it, though 
there hadn't been oats sowed on it for twenty years. No 
sir, I wouldn't have believed it myself, if I hadn't seen 
them oats with my own eyes, gentlemen ! ' ' 

Speaking of Hill reminds me that I stopped over night 
at Geo. W. Dearborn's, who was one of the jurymen on the 
LePage-Langmaid murder case many years ago. Mr. Dear- 
born is rising seventy-five and quite vigorous for his years. 
He lives in the same house where his grandfather settled 
when coming to the town from Rockingham County, where 
the family originally settled, and four generations of Dear- 
borns have attended the local district school at Hill Center, 
His farm is a good one for cultivation and a good one for 
summer boarders, but it's for sale, and a gentleman named 
Call, also of Hill, says they're all for sale but the orphans' 
home and the county farm, which isn't as true now as it 
was a few years ago. Many New Hampshire farms are 
drifting into the hands of syndicates and summer resi- 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 57 

dents and ^rowin'i' up to wood and timlxT. which is just 
what most of them are adapted for and litth' else. 

Geo. 0. Stevens of Canaan, whom I reeently met, is not 
much of a talker, and doesn't ^o off half-cocked, but he says 
that Billy Bry^an is the man that is going to sweep the 
country in 1908. He was a Bryan man when Bryan was 
regarded as "too radical" for any use, say ten or twelve 
years ago. Strange what changes ten years will work. 
Now Bryan is the conservative, to whom the "safe and 
sane ' ' element that picks your pocket while calling attention 
to the wicked socialists' scheme to "divide up the prop- 
erty," is looking for protection from Roosevelt. 

Have you noticed the pines this spring? Thousands on 
thousands of them have many, if not all, of their lower 
limbs tipped with four to six inches of dead wood on which 
the needles are red as though scorched by fire. No growth 
has been made on them this year. What is the reason? I 
think it is because of the warm spell in January, '06. In 
many New Hampshire towns the ground thawed out. Frog 
ponds opened up and the frogs were heard peeping. I 
think these pines started to grow sufficiently so that when 
the cold wave in March struck them, or earlier, the new 
growth was frozen so severely that the ends of the limbs 
were killed. Nature has a chilly and biting way of adminis- 
tering punishment upon the tender growing plants that she 
nourishes into being, and only the fittest can survive. I no- 
ticed these pines in many sections of New Hampshire this 
spring, but perhaps as much as anywhere upon the hills of 
North Groton. This is a slumbering community a little back 
from the railroad that one climbs into, some like the upper 
berth in a Pullman, only it's more of a climb, and when one 
gets there he finds in the most thickly settled part of the 
comnumity sixteen empty houses and deserted farms out of 
a possible thirty-two within a mile or so of the North Groton 
post-office. A farm of forty-four acres, nineteen of which is 
wood lot, buildings in fair condition, one mile from Groton 
post-office, is to be sold in a few days, "as we go to press," 



58 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

at auction, and probably $200 will take it. Why don't 
some of you fellows get out here who are raving about the 
greedy monopolists and landlords, and stop paying rent? 
There's room for several thousand up here among the hills. 



SNAKE STORIES. 



Mr. Dalton's Grandmother Used to Tell Them to the Kids. 



J. F. Hastings of Penacook, formerly of Bristol, always 
has a funny story to tell me (he's along in the seventies 
and an undertaker by profession). Isn't it curious that 
humorists are generally solemn and cadaverous, and un- 
dertakers more often jolly and gay? This time Brother 
Hastings told me about the grandmother of a Mr. Dalton, 
who lives, or did live, on the river road from Bristol to 
New Hampton. This old dame, according to Mr. Hastings, 
was of solemn and austere mien. She never laughed and 
seemed hurt if anyone else did, but she could tell stories, 
and the children were duly impressed by her weird and 
uncanny tales of ghosts, and unusual occurrences that hap- 
pened "when I was young." She was totally blind, but 
could do as good a stint at knitting socks as anybody. The 
story that impressed the youthful mind of Brother Hast- 
ings the most was as follows : "When I was a young girl," 
said grandma, "I used to pick berries from the raspberry 
bushes on the hill up back of the barn, and I enjoyed it 
all except that I was very much afraid of snakes. They 
don't have no such snakes now, child, as they used to in 
them days, no, indeed ! Leastwise, I haven 't seen none like 
'em. They were great big house adders, big as a stove 
pipe ; and there was the long streaked water snakes that 
would reach up with a mouth a foot across, and swallow a 
goose or a duck just like they would a chicken, though of 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 59 

course chickens didn't swim on water. Then there was the 
curious hoop snakes that would take their tails in their 
mouth and come rolling right after you like a great live 
hoop ; and the jointed snakes, that if you hit one a hard 
blow Avith a sled stake, he would fall all to pieces and you 
had to kill every piece, or they would join together again 
and crawl off as if nothing had happened. The black 
snakes in them days were so long that they would twist their 
tail around a prong in the stump fence and fasten on to 
another stump a dozen feet away, and sometimes I've put 
my hand on what I thought was a rail in the dark and had 
it slip down and glide off into the brush with an awful hiss. 
Oh ! them snakes were a good deal bigger than we have 
nowadays, yes, indeed! But what I was going to tell you 
about was, one day when I'd been berrying up on the side 
hill two or three hours, and the sun was just baking hot, 
I looked up on hearing a little crackling noise, and my eyes 
bulged right out of my head. I dropped my berries and 
I verily believe my hat would a 'lifted right off of my cork- 
screw curls, when I seen the biggest old hoop snake I guess 
that ever w^as. It was bigger than a cart wheel, and I 
saw it was beginning to roll right towards me, so I putter 
for the house as fast as I could leg it, and that awful thing 
right after me. When I went around the corner of the 
barn the hoop snake just struck the upper corner a glancing 
blow that tore every board off that end of it, and then 
whirled dowTi across the road ; and when it struck the stone 
wall it knocked the wall down and bounded fifty feet into 
the air. It went crashing out of sight towards the river 
and I never saw it again." Well, I should say once was 
enough. 



60 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

ALONG THE CONNECTICUT. 



The River Sailor. — Stopping With Johnson.— A Latham 
Story. — "Tater" Hill in Prose and Verse. 



I saw the Ancieut Mariner. — 

The one of which we dream ; 
His grizzly mane hung down his back, 

His boat ploughed up the stream. 
It ploughed three miles an hour, sir! 

'Twas that or just about, 
Unless there came a shower, sir, 

And drowned his fire out. 
His smokestack was a stovepipe; 

His whistle was of tin ; 
His boat of blue could sail in dew. 

It was so light and thin. 
And when he turned about, sir, 

To travel back again. 
He went so fast the scenery past 

It gave his eyes a pain. 

I heard something the other afternoon as I passed up the 
left bank of the Connecticut which sounded like a tea kettle 
boiling and sputtering to itself, only it sputtered with a 
little more regularity. It was not as loud as a gasoline en- 
gine, and it didn't have the vicious honk of a motor cycle. 
It was a quiet, restful chug, chug, chug ; and after looking 
around for awhile I discovered that it proceeded from a 
little blue boat that was not making much noise, nor a great 
lot of headway, but by selecting a stationary object to 
squint by, I became convinced that its steady application 
to business was having results. It was actually moving, 
and the venerable gentleman who appeared to be captain, 
officers, crew and sole passenger, seemed to be taking lots 
of comfort as he shaded his eyes and peered at the brown 
waters and green shores of the river, up which he was mak- 
ing his lazy and listless way, and I half wished I had noth- 




CONNKCTICt'T KIVKH ISKI.OW HAX()\ KK I'.HIDCK. 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 61 

ing else to do but dally with a craft like that. It must 
be great fun. 

I put up the first night out with a Gazette patron named 
Johnson. Of course, dear reader, you couldn't expect me 
to pass this point without referring to the song entitled 
"Too Much Johnson," but though there are six of the 
manly little boys and one darling little girl, all under ten, 
I believe, they are none too much, and the Rambler, who 
has fourteen to call him "pa," likes to speak an appreci- 
ative word for the Yankee who goes in strong on the rising 
generation. Leave something behind worth while, friends. 
Money and monuments of marble are things that anyone 
can acquire, but posterity is not so easy to acquire. To 
many it has been denied to leave a root of remembrance 
behind them. 

^Mr. Johnson told me of a brother of his who is a famous 
fox hunter. At least, he has a number of traps, and when 
he comes up the pike to Farmer Brown's, or Jones', or 
Smith's, and innocently asks leave to set his traps over in 
the farmer's woods, he gets permission, the more readily as 
the foxes are known to be a pest of the Avorst kind. 

By and by Johnson pulls up his traps and moves on, 
having presumably got all the foxes to be had in those 
woods. (He has certainly got an estimate of all the timber 
in them and transmitted it to headquarters.) Then, pretty 
soon, along comes a timber speculator. He doesn't care 
much for foxes, but he's long on timber, got more lots than 
he knows what to do with, but he might invest in just one 
more, merely to hold till it got its growth ; might cut it 
sometime, you know. Well! You wouldn't think those two 
forerunners of a portable sawmill were partners, but that's 
just what they are, and now I've let you in on this thing 
perhaps you better look your own timber lot over and run 
the price up a few hundred. It'll stand it, for old Dame 
Nature is working riglit along and timber is increasing 
faster than money in a bank, — yes, in two hanks! 

I don't think this storv al)()ut John Latham, wliose name 



62 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

has appeared in a previous article of mine, has ever been 
published. J. J. Conant of Thetford, a gentleman well 
over eighty and who has just returned from a winter spent 
beyond the Mississippi, told me that it was either Sidney 
Converse, or a boy of a previous generation named Con- 
verse, who had playfully hit John over his bare back with 
a riding whip when he was taking one of his frequent baths 
in Post pond. John didn't say much, but watching his 
opportunity, seized the offender and plunged him under 
water, where he held him till he nearly drowned, chuckling 
the while, "There, ye little sinner, stay down there and 
watch the little fishes swim ! ' ' 

I believe it was INIrs. Conant who told me of the origin of 
the appellation of "Tater Hill," in Thetford. Mind you, 
it is not "Potato Hill." 

It seems that after the Revolution, a soldier in that war, 
named Crandall. and his wife, moved on to the hill, cleared 
up a few acres and reared a log cabin in the clearing, plant- 
ing the virgin soil to "taters." "Taters" grew in those 
days, and the tops had filled the clearing all but one lit- 
tle path or trail that led from the valley, when one night, 
Crandall 's brother from Connecticut came up to the 
cabin to be accommodated for the night. He thought they 
were elderberry bushes, but in the morning, when he saw 
them by daylight and noted that they had grown half way 
up the giant old growth trees and covered the cabin roof, 
he ejaculated, "Brother, you ought to call this 'Tater' 
Hill," and "Tater" Hill it has been from that day to this. 
Mr. Crandall and his wife both lived to be ninety-six years 
of age and died on the farm which they cleared on "Tater" 
Hill . 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 63 

THE TATER. 



Here's to the glory of "taters" departed, 

The potatoes of commerce are naught to compare, 

So puiiky and guarly and oft hollow-hearted, 
And so few in the hill, as we all are aware. 

Those taters were taters, there's no use denying, 

Our grandfathers raised 'niong the stones and the stumps, 

As long as a ball bat, they used them for prying 
The rocks from the furrows, to pile them in clumps. 

Then hey for the taters, the great mealy taters, 
The bustiii' big taters our grandfathers raised; 
For stock, starch, or table they have no imitators. 
At their truthful description we may well be amazed. 



UP IN THETFORD. 



The Lost Name. — Bill Stevens' Stones. — Fletcher (Proctor) 
on Parade. 



Did yon ever have a name escape you? I have, and it 
gives one that foolish feelinor that makes one want to step 
out behind the shed and kiek him or herself, as the case 

may be. 

He was an aged citizen 

Of eighty years or more, 
And he sat beneath his chestnut tree 

Before his cottage door. 

And he was to the manor born 

In that vicinity; 
None were more versed in neighbor lore. 

Or longer lived than he. 

So I made bold of him to ask 

His nearest neighbor's name; 
He took it for an easy task 

To just pronounce the same. 



64 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

"Oh, yes; his name is — lem-me-see! 

What the thunder is it any way? 
It's strange it has escaped from me. 

I see that fellow passing every day! 

"He's got a wart beside his nose, 

He wears a last year's hat. 
He's got a light gray suit of clothes, 

His name — I can't get that I 

"Just wait a minute — let me think! 

It's neither singular nor long." 
Then, pulling at his thin gray hair, 

He allowed his memory'd gone wrong! 

"Oh, never mind, my aged friend, 

I soon will learn your neighbor's name." 

So at the neighbor's door I called. 
He forthwith to the portal came. 

"Dear sir I" I said in accents mild, 

Being a stranger in your town 
Might I inquire your honored name?" 

"My honored name," says he, "is Brown!" 

Strange what a little thing, will floor a man sometimes. 

I called on my old friend Bill Stevens up in West Fairlee 
this week and tried to make him think he could remember 
David French, who used to live on the Leonard Quimby 
farm up on Tater Hill, thirty odd years ago; and after I 
mentioned that he had three girls and a boy, whose names 
were Eliza, George, Jennie and Emma, some of them about 
Bill's age, that subtle and elusive thing called memory be- 
gan to work, and Bill went back into its recesses and dug 
out the following: 

"Oh yes," said he, '*I remember Dave French all right. 
Lived right across the corner of the roads from him. I re- 
member right well he had one of the biggest and crossest 
old bulls I ever see. Had 'im turned out in a back pasture 
a good ways from the house, and me and my brother Fred 
didn't know anything about it till we got mighty nigh the 
middle of the lot one day, out skunk hunting. Then we 




MY HOMH. 



It isn't very pretty. 

It isn't very grand. 
But, friends, my wife lives in it — 

The best wife in the land! 

And who so has a. eottaj-'c, 

A little happy home. 
Has joy though hard Ins pathway 

And far his feet mav roam. 



So. vi(>w it not with scorning. 
This little lienveii on cartli. 

But may your own be like it. 
And may you know its worth ! 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 65 

sighted the old fellow bearing down on us with his head 
down, full head of steam on, and bellering for blood. 
There was a swamp about thirty rods from us where a few 
logs and stumps would allow a foothold, and Fred and I 
made some long, irregular tracks in that direction, with the 
bull a close third. I don't know which got there first, but 
we Avere both ahead of the bull an' lit on the high places 
out in about two rods from the edge of the mire. The bull 
was so thirsty for gore that he never stopped till he was 
clear to his belty in the mud and couldn't get any nearer. 
So after we had tantalized the brute till he frothed at the 
mouth in his wild rage, we skipped out and went over and 
notified Dave that he'd have ter get a yoke of oxen and go 
over and pry up his bullship. And that is what he done, 
but he used to keep him in a pen with a ten-foot fence 
around it after that till he got ready to beef him." 

Mr. Stevens is of the opinion that trees grow rings or 
grains irregularly, growing three rings some years and none 
on others. He says that many years ago over at Campbell's 
Corner in Thetford, on the day that James Campbell was 
born, Eben Campbell, his father, left a little cherry tree 
growing in the garden that then had a slight stock and 
only two leaves, stating that when James was twenty-one 
years of age he would cut the tree down. True to his word 
he did cut it down on the day James was twenty-one, and 
there were forty-seven grains or circles from the heart to 
the circumference. "And," added Bill, "I guess Jim '11 
vouch for the correctness of this statement." 

Somebody knows the story that goes with "Sawney 
Bean," a section of Thetford; "Canton," West Fairlee; 
"Pekin," Post Mills, and Skunk HoUow, but I dcm't. so 
I will leave it to other hands. 

Politics are waxing hot up among the green hills and 
mountains of old Vermont, and it may have been this, or 
the hot weather, or the fact that what I don't know about 
Vermont politics would fill a big book, that caused me to 
shed the following: 



66 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

"Can you perceive our Percival?" 

Asked Fletcher on parade. 

"And what's the bugger doing of this morning? 

I've got a think a-coming, 

And I tell you I'm afraid!" 

"It's nothing much — it's nothing much!" 

His first lieutenant said, 

"For Clement's boom is dying at the horning." 

"What have the Independents done?" 

Asked Fletcher on parade. 

"And will they stick until election morning? 

I'm troubled in my dreams of them, 

In battle paint arrayed." 

"Oh, don't you fear — oh, don't you fear!" 

His first lieutenant said, 

"We've got the dough to win, election morning." 

"But the Democrats have swallowed him," 

Says Fletcher on parade. 

"The bob and line and sinker all have gone in. 

And if they can keep 'im down, 

I just know my game is played." 

"Now switch that off — now switch that off!" 

His first lieutenant said, 

"For its dough will win the game, election morning.' 



AMONG THE GREEN HILLS OF HANOVER, 



The 8 elf -Made Toad.— Mrs. M. and the Parson.— Don't 
Judge Hastily. 



He viewed me with his placid eye. 

He neither smiled nor spoke. 
He was a thing of mystery, 

His style I scarce could brook. 

He moved not from his country seat 

Beside the teeming road, 
And all who passed with high disdain 

He viewed — this warty toad! 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 67 

For he had passed a lifetime there, 

And every sign he wore 
That he was a really "self-made" toad, 

What could he want for, more? 

And while he swelled with sudden pride 

Because of place and power, 
A dump cart wheel rolled over his head 

And laid him low that hour! 

Readers, we have most of us witnessed such a sad termi- 
nation as that depicted above, but have we ever realized 
that the poor toad is a type of a class of people and cor- 
porate organizations that play their little parts on a more 
or less larger scale ? Well, he is, and the next few years, 
unless all signs fail, the "dump cart wheel" of destiny is 
liable to work havoc with some of the best laid schemes of 
our alleged self-made men of commerce and industry. 
"Watch and see! 

I was pleased not long since by a little piece of neigh- 
borhood gossip that I heard that I don't think will hurt 
anyone in retailing and had considerable of a humorous 
"tinge to it. It seems that the good parson of the locality 
had been making calls on his parishioners, and among 

the number was old I\Irs. M . Twice had he called and 

exchanged views on the w^eather, the old lady's health, the 
crops, the prospects for spring chickens, and the state of 
that particular branch of Zion. Twice had he been invited 
to stop to supper and twice had he accepted the invitation. 
Twice also he had wound up his pastoral visit with a brief 
and satisfactory prayer. Twice, too, when he shook the 
hand of the dear old ^Mother in Israel had he found a silver 
dollar in his not reluctant palm. But the third time was 
his undoing. "Yes," remarked Mrs. M. reminiscently, 
"he come here and was jest as nice as could be till after 
supper, an' he'd i)ieked his teeth an' praised my victuals 
an' inquired all about my late husband, whose picture was 
hanging opposite the lookin' glass in the sitting room, an' 



68 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

asked if we shouldn't have a season of prayer, and then 
what do you suppose he started off with? Well, you 
couldn 't guess in a year. He gets down beside the big arm 
chair I always set in for the parson, and I bowed my head 
and he says, says he, 'Lord. I thank thee that even a little 
light has shined in on the ignorant!' Think of it! Now 
who did that ereeter mean? I guess, by gracious, if he 
meant me he could save his breath ! I ain 't any more ig- 
norant than he is, and I straightened right up and let him 
pray it out, and when he got through, I rose up and showed 
him the door with an air that would keep milk from turn- 
ing for a week, I guess, an' I didn't shake his hand neither. 
He looked kind of worked up, but he never said a word and 
took his hat an' left as stiff as a ramrod, an' he hain't 
darkened my door since. Well, last week who should I see 
out here on the corner but the parson, and he was talking 
with Deacon Spilker and Mr. Potts, the druggist, and I 
walks right out to 'em, for I wanted 'em to hear what I was 
about to say, and says I: 'Parson, you was kind enough 
to call on me twice, and when you first came I gave you a 
dollar for coming. Now for six weeks you haven't been 
nigh the house, and here's a dollar,' says I, 'for stayin' 
away, ' 

' ' ' Do you mean it ? ' says he. and says I 'I do ! ' and with 
that I held out the dollar and he took it and stuffed it in 
his pocket with a queer look on his face, and Deacon Spilker 
coughed, and Mr. Potts appeared as if he was tickled over 
something. WellJ I went back in the house then and 
haven't seen the parson since." 

Everyone knows I am not a politician and will realize 
that I approach the subject without prejudice, and with 
my usual jaunty manner, as follows : 

A gay old silk stocking from Boston 

Aspired to be Gov'ner for "just one ;" 

But while money talks, 

In spite of his rocks 

His "address" was the point he lost on! 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 69 

A "close" man who lives in the city 
Opined he could capture the kitty, 
Put his eggs in "Put's" hat, 
(He was blind as a bat) 

For he dropped the whole l)unch — what a pity! 
(But he got there just the same.) 

There was "Rosy" from Derry and he — 

Boui^ht a trumpet and blowed it quite free. 

But he blew it so loud 

That he tired the crowd. 

So that was the end of all three. 

For that "Last shall be first in the race" 

Has been often and often the case. 

And the Sullivan man. 

The latest who ran. 

May (nit) get the coveted place. 

In traveling about over the state I am brought in contact 
with many of the brothers of the mystic links every day, 
and I wish to say that I have yet to meet one of whom I 
was ashamed, and hope the sentiment may be reciprocated. 
Odd Fellowship is a school that teaches the age-old lesson 
that humanity will never cease to need of our common 
brotherhood. As we meet and greet a brother, there is a 
thrill of pleasure little less than that experienced in the 
meeting of a blood relation, and as we think with pride and 
satisfaction of what Odd Fellowship has done, and is do- 
ing, it is barely possible that we may throw out the chest 
just a little too much. In this connection you will pardon 
me if I refer to a little incident related to me by a brother 
in Whitefield. 

He said that while living at Lisbon some years ago, an 
aged brother in the order fell sick, and for a long time re- 
ceived the aid from his lodge to which he was entitled, 
including care and watchers when needed, and he finally 
died, receiving the last sad rites of the order. 

Now the old gentleman was also a ^lason, and while it 
was known that the\' had lielpod him in his hours of dis- 



70 WATSIDE NOTES. 

tress, it was generally believed that the Odd Fellows had 
done for him much the most. At a meeting of the order 
soon after the brother's burial, some criticism of the Ma- 
sonic fraternity was heard in the lodge room for the sup- 
posed lack of fraternal aid in the case in question. 

After a while the brother who related the incident, and 
who is also a Mason, proposed that a committee of two, one 
from each order, be sent to interview the widow of the late 
brother on the subject of aid received. This committee, 
after the interview, reported duly, and some of the brothers 
were surprised to learn that the Masonic fraternity had in 
this particular case given much the largest amount for the 
relief of the brother. 

Let us, brothers, keep on in our good work, knowing that 
it is more blessed to- give than to receive, and honoring 
kindred fraternal orders engaged in the same great work. 
There is a field for all. 



THE POLITICAL SITUATION 
In New Hampshire, as it Appeared August 11, 1906. 



Oh who shall wave the banner, 

And who shall bear the palm ; 
To whom the loud hozanna 

Float lip from town and farm? 
"Oh, I will take the pennant," 

Says cheerful Rosy P. 
"I'll whittle down your taxes, 

If you will hear to me. 
I'm I'eady and I'm willing. 

And I'm listening patiently 
To hear that office calling, 

And my name's Economy ! 
Oh, I'll pare the state's expenses 

Till they look like 30 cents ; 
And the nigger in the woodpile 

I'll expose, at all events !" 



WxVYSIDE NOTES. 

Then up speaks the gonial Greenleaf 

From his perch among the rocks, 
Telling how he loves our mountains, 

You can safely bet your socks ! 
And he wouldn't shirk the duties 

Of his citizenship, no fear; 
And he's willing to be governor 

Fully two months in the year ! 
And Charlie Floyd, the "Close" man. 

Is more than willing, too, 
With his polished "B. M." collar. 

To govern just a few. 
What with these and Winston Churchill. 

The quill pushing Cornish man, 
There'll be one to hold the standard. 

And three, at least, who "also ran." 
So sound 'em on "the issues" 

And thump 'em on the back, 
.nd make 'em promise faithful. 

So they can't take it back. 
What about the Salem race track 

And the awful liquor curse? 

hat will they do with the dog laws. 

And with "mobiles," which are worse? 
Will they free our old toll bridges. 

And do up the grafter crew? 
The hete noir of all "muckrakers," 

Will they kill free liasses too? 
Oh, they love the horny-fisted 
Son of toil an awful lot ; 
But will it last all winter. 

When the campaign is forgot? 
Will it last till after Christmas. 

With its heart throb fierce and hot? 
I iiause to hear some doubting Thomas 

Coolly answer, "I guess not 1" 



71 



72 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

DIFFICULTIES OF A HUMORIST. 



People Who Balk at Puhlicity. — The Back Comb. — Lost 
Wad. — Dog Days. — Advertising Frauds. — Urwle Mark 
Pierce and the Needed Rain. — An Andover Reminiscence. 



August 20, 1906. 

It is with diffidence that I resume my pencil after an 
absence of a year from your midst. The fact is that some 
of your readers took me too seriously last year, and one en- 
terprising gentleman stated to me last week, that if he had 
met me just after reading an article of mine in which he 
was mentioned, there would have been seven kinds of 
trouble and black eyes for at least one. A gentleman like 
that of course isn't to blame. He isn't used to having 
his name and business paraded in cold type, but really 
there was nothing to get excited over. Think of Brother 
Rockefeller and Brother Carnegie and Uncle Russell Sage 
and Hettie Green. Can you remember anything compli- 
mentary having been said of them in the last ten years un- 
less it was a paid advertisement, and you don't hear of 
their rearing up on their hind legs and prancing into the 
publicity arena wanting to maul someone and wipe up the 
floor with them, also decorate their optics, or put a new 
kink in their nose? Indeed not! Why, they'd have to 
work overtime to chase down a thousandth part of the lies 
that are told about them, to say nothing of the truth, and 
that's a good deal more than some people can stand. This 
year I have determined to mention no names and then there 
won't be any trouble, except in cases where it is absolutely 
necessary. 

The first new sub I took this w^eek looked rather sheepish 
when in reaching into his back pocket for some of the need- 
ful for the Reporter, he pulled out instead of a wallet, 
a lady's back hair comb. But he was equal to the emer- 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 



geiicy. and explained that he found it under an old apple 
tree up near one of the summer boarding houses. I think 
it belonged to one of those Boston school-marms. 

Last spring a Kearsarge man was plowing, on the road 
leading from the Russell Cottages to Intervale, and after 
plowing up an acre or so he discovered that his pocket- 
book had in some way slipped into a furrow and been cov- 
ered up. As it contained over a hundred dollars and valu- 
able papers, it was too valuable to lose, and so, like the 
famous "man of our town, and he was wondrous wise," 
who "jumped into another bush and scratched them (his 
eyes) back again," our friend reversed his plow and after 
turning back fifteen furrows plowed up his lost treasure, 
which was a pretty good day's work in itself. 

The weather we've had recently has been doggoned hot, 
even for dog days, in which dogs are supposed to go on a 
rampage. Speaking of dogs, I am inclined to believe 
that they are fully as safe in dog days as at any time. I 
have certainly found them so. A dog that will exert him- 
self to unload a load of bark for your special benefit on one 
of these sweltering August days, is an enterprising and 
hard working pup and ought to be encouraged— where you 
enjoy the bark and can use it in your business. 

There is a man up at Glen Station who is one of a thou- 
sand. He has been unable to move except on crutches or 
in a wheel chair for nearly five years. His ailment is, I be- 
lieve, a spinal trouble. He answered, it seems, an adver- 
tisement of a specialist in New York, who engaged to im- 
prove his condition within a specified time or refund the 
cost of the treatment, which had to be paid in advance. 
The treatment was taken according to directions, with abso- 
lutely no improvement, and of course a request for the 
promised "refund" was made. This was met by the doc- 
tor in New York with a demand for a string of affidavits 
and legal requirements sworn to before a justice. It hap- 
pens that our sick friend has a neighbor who is a justice 
and so it was not so hard to fill out the papers as requested 



<-t WAYSIDE NOTES. •* 

and fire them back at the New York doctor, with the result 
that he actually got his money back. 

The point of the above unvarnished tale (I am not going 
to varnish any more tales) is that if patent medicine vend- 
ers, picture enlargers, book agents, — yes, and some news- 
paper and magazine canvassers would use the public as they 
would like to be used themselves, business would be better 
for bona fide agents. One of the worst swindles going is 
the oily sneak who comes to you and begs your photographs 
of dead or living friends for enlarging, agreeing to return 
the picture, and you needn't pay for the enlarged picture 
unless it suits you. Nothing is said about a frame. When 
after a long and tedious wait you are notified that you can 
have the enlarged picture by paying for a three or four 
dollar frame. Otherwise — and this is the dirtiest part of 
the business — you don 't get your original photograph back. 
I know several cases in my experience where this has hap- 
pened and the picture stolen was the only one they had of 
some near and dear friend. The picture thief is the worst 
kind of a thief, and it has become such a nuisance that few 
people will trust a picture of a loved one in the hands of 
strangers without absolute proof of their honesty. 

I know Uncle Mark Pierce won't get mad if I mention 
his name. He lives up near Glen Station and is on the 
sunny side (that's the western side, you know) of eighty; 
and when I remarked that I was wearing (dust) tanned 
shoes the other day, his instant rejoinder was that they 
were getting mighty popular, which reminds us that it's 
time for more rain. Crops generally have done well all 
over New Hampshire where I have traveled, but I hope 
before this reaches your readers the much needed will have 
happened ; as the old fellow prayed at the meeting which 
had been devoted to prayers for long-delayed rain, and af- 
ter several different kinds of copious and sudden down- 
pourings had been requested, this old chap prayed 
as follows: "Oh Lord, send us rain. We need it. But, 
Lord, don't send it in cloud-bursts an' torrents an' sudden 



WAYSIDE NOTES. '^ 

floods, ez these folks has been eallin' for, but. Lord, send 
us a good old drizzly-drozzly rain that soaks in gradual 
and freshens up the yearth!" That's the kind we're look- 
ing for at the present time. 

Over in Andover, N. H., twenty miles from the state 
house in Concord, many years ago there lived a family of 
Pages, in which w^ere two boys who grew to manhood to- 
gether and were inseparable companions. A certani 
quaintness of speech and shrewd simplicity made them 
marked characters, whose sayings were handed down and 
will be remembered by older residents of Andover even now. 
One day the boys went up on what was known as Stevens 
Hill near the Flaghole, where the state house in the dis- 
tance was plainly visible. Lander Page, shading his eyes 
and looking intently in that direction, declared: "Bruver 
Jo, I can see a ''minge" (small insect) on the state house 
dome ! ' ' Bruver Jo, not to be outdone, shaded his own eyes 
and after taking a long look replied : ' ' So you can, Bruver 
Lander, and I can see him wink." If this story has been 
told before, it may be new to some. 



A FEW STORIES FROM THE SACO. 

He Wouldn't Have it Sawed Off, Thank You.— Bill Dim- 
ick's Pig Story.— McGillicuddy, the Lahor Van.— Ac- 
cording to Sam Oompers. 

" September 3. 1906. 
Among the smart old men of Eaton, which town I visited 
last week. I think :\Ir. Joseph Shackford should be men- 
tioned. Last winter :\Ir. Shackford had the misfortune to 
lose two of his fingers in a buzz saw, and as they didn't seem 
to heal as rapidly as desired, on advice of a local physician, 
he went to a hospital down country for treatment. 

These down country hospitals are a great institution for 
carving people up and splicing and transplanting, etc., but 



76 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

when they told Mr. Shaekford that they couldn't see but 
what he would have to have his arm lopped off, he averred 
that he couldn't see it in that light, and he guessed he'd 
lug his arm back with him just as it was, if it was all the 
same to them. The upshot was that Mr. Bickford came 
back to Eaton, and though over eighty years of age, has 
used that arm (and the other one) in planting, hoeing and 
raising as nice pieces of corn, beans and potatoes, acres in 
extent, as there are in Eaton, besides haying and all his 
other farm work. I don't think these flip doctors would 
be so ready to part with portions of their anatomy as they 
are to slice up other people. 

There is a remarkable spring in West Fryeburg at the 
farm of Mrs. Sarah N. Stevens, which always fails up in a 
wet time but puts in its best licks the dryer the weather 
happens to be. This is accounted for on the theory that 
the vein of which the spring is a part runs with such force 
when there is plenty of water that it is diverted to another 
channel. This theory, I confess, doesn't sound just right 
somehow, but I mention it just to see if some of our local 
wise men couldn't trot out a better one. I can't. 

The new trail up Kearsarge Mountain from Alvin 
Head's in South Chatham is much patronized this season 
and some of these fine fall days the views are said to be ex- 
cellent from the summit. I am willing to take their word 
for it, as I like the view (of the summit) better from the 
old familiar country roads that I have been promenading 
over with my little brown bag for the last dozen years or so. 

Bill Dimick of North Conway, where I spent Sunday 
with my wife, told me a bran new (to me) story, and I 
guess it comes in here. It seems that in a certain com- 
munity, thirty or forty miles from here (it couldn't have 
been any nearer) lived one of those lean-souled people who 
always borrow, but never lend, and he had been borrowing 
pork of his neighbors with the voluble assurance that "he'd 
pay it back when he killed his pig." until he actually bor- 
rowed more pork than his most sanguine estimate of his 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 77 

own porker would enable him to return. He happened to 
mention this fact to a neighbor, when he advised him as 
follows : " I '11 tell you what you do, Rube ; you kill your 
pig an' hang it out ter cool over night; then you pull it in 
early an' take it down cellar an' hide it, then you give out 
that air pig was stole, see? An' they'll believe ye an' 
they'll be so sorry they'll maybe chip in an' give ye some 
more pork, see ? ' ' 

Rube "see" and he followed directions to the letter — 
with one exception. When he got up and went out to pull 
in his pig in the frosty morning hour — it wasn't there! 
His wise neighbor had it in liis cellar. Over went Rube to 
this neighbor and came storming in vociferating that "some 
one had stolen his pig." 

"That's right, that's right, old feller," chimed in the 
neighbor, "stick to it right smart; they'll suttinly believe 
ye!" 

"But I tell you it is stole!" yelled Rube, purple in the 
face. 

"Didn't I say that was right, neighbor?" yelled the 
other. ' ' Stick to it, they '11 all believe ye. ' ' 

And Rube took his large bunch of wrath and departed 
and really it was not much satisfaction to him that they 
did all believe him, but I hope they didn't give him any 
more pork. It served him right, pretty near! 

As I was crossing the lawn of Doctor Lougee. at Frye- 
burg, on Friday la.st, I noticed a young man sprinting down 
]\Iain Street and once only he let out a yell, ' ' Fire ! " He 
didn't need to yell again. I glanced to the roof of the Ox- 
ford House, where thick, heavy smoke was pouring from 
end to end and from the windows of the towers at either 
corner. It was doomed, and only for sheer luck the whole 
village would have gone. The water in the hose pipes had 
very little force, and finally gave out altogether. Four- 
teen houses were swept away during that fateful da.y, and 
Fryeburg has a problem of ade(|uate water supply for fire 
protection, which is easier to lay out Ihan it is to figure out. 



78 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

I called at North Fryebiirg at the bran new hall, as I 
heard a distant rumbling- that indicated some kind of an at- 
mospheric (hot air) disturbance. I found it was only D. 
J. McGillicuddy, from Lewiston, trying to convince a bunch 
of the horny-fisted that he was a great friend of the labor- 
ing man. With tears in his eyes he told them that the 
wicked Eepublicans had got all the offices in the state of 
Maine trustified and allotted; in particular the speaker of 
the house and the president of the senate are mortgaged 
till 1942. As I wasn't after any of those offices, I didn't 
stop to hear any more, but I think it is too bad they won't 
let Dan have a job; he is "an awful willin' worker!" But 
seriously, the spectacle of Sam Gompers without the shadow 
of authority from the A. F. of L., prancing into Little- 
field's district and trying to pay off a personal score by 
electing the genial and rubicund Daniel to an office in which 
there is no evidence he would favor labor more than his op- 
ponent, when there is a candidate in the field, on a plat- 
form favoring all the demands of labor and also all that 
labor ought to demand, a candidate who carries a Union 
card in his pocket and the interests of Union labor at heart, 
is one most edifying to "the man in the road!" 

After about a thousand years more Gompers will learn 
something of the proper attitude of labor in politics. He 
doesn't know its a, b. c now, and is a mighty lame duck 
for the position he has been honored with. 



MR. PITCHERS STILL TRAVELING. 



Appropriate Mnsings. — Taking Notes. — Jerry Goodwin's 
Trains Full as Usual. — TJ^icle Gust Fullerton's Story. 



December 10, 1906. 
Fame is a verj" elusive thing, dear readers, and while you 
are making a wild and frantic dash for the star-eyed, wall- 
eyed or cross-eyed goddess, I shall never undertake to put 
salt on her — excuse me — to catch up with her. 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 79 

I've been traveling in Carroll County for eleven years 
(does it seem so long?) and I've just got to the point where 
a few people know me, — not by my first name, but as Mr. 
Pitchers. They say ' ' Little ' ' doesn 't sound appropriate to a 
red-faced, bald-headed, hippopotamus-shaped old lobster, 
who has been successfully initiated into the venerable and 
ancient order of Grandads (with a big G, please), and it 
doesn't make but little difference to me, so long as they 
suit themselves. One old lady I met called me a money 
grabber. That hurt what remains of my feelings. The 
idea ! I\Ie mercenary ? Perish the thought ! Any one who 
has ever noticed the unassuming and insinuating manner 
I have when I amble into the door yard, causing the hens 
and eats to take refuge in flight, and dogs, if there are any, 
to at once assume a Avarlike attitude, will admit without 
coaching, that my visits are of the purely unofficial and so- 
cial variety ; but perhaps you never noticed that when I 've 
pinched whatever filthy lucre there may be coming my way, 
while I fain would longer linger, I do not linger longer — 
I skiddoo, as it were, leaving nothing behind but the mem- 
ory of my fascinating smile — grin, some call it. 

I have noticed in my varied career that it pays to take 
notice as one goes along, and to take notes — if they are col- 
lectable, so last Monday Avhen I was at Epping I took some 
observations. The first thing I noticed was a gentleman 
Avith a jumper and overalls on. lugging a small forge and 
several metallic tools over past the railroad station, and I 
sized him up for a plumber. When I Avoke up and found 
all the Avater ])ipes in the house frozen up the other morn- 
ing, I realized Avhat the plumber is for. lie is the man 
Avho rii)s up your floor, tears the inAvards out of your sink, 
iuA-estigates the secret places of the most high, so to speak, 
and makes out an elegant bill after it is all oA'or but the 
shouting — you are the fellow Avho has to shout. I asked 
the plumber Avhat Avas the price of eighteen carat diamonds, 
and Avhat make of automobile he used Avhile touring the 
continent in the good old sunnner time, but he never 



80 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

laughed. I hoped to win his confidence and engage him 
in conversation, but all he said was for me to go and follow 
myself round a while. 

Then I noticed a carload of boards in a freight train near 
by and took a note of that. Perhaps no one will be inter- 
ested in this item, but when I say that I observed the sta- 
tion agent go along and yank out a piece about six feet 
long from between the two piles, where a knight of the 
road had been occupying an upper berth, I reflected that 
there were some things rougher than the planed side of a 
board to ride on, — for instance, the rough side. The station 
agent didn't place the board on top of the load, as I thought 
he would. No, he shoved it under the platform with a lot 
of others, and I learned a lesson in thrift. If he had taken 
something more valuable it would have been graft, but that 
isn't near as pretty a word, gentle readers. 

Another carload on the train I mention contained, I 
should say, 300 small fir trees about three inches in diameter 
at the butt. Christmas is coming. Hundreds of carloads 
of these trees will be cut from the hillsides of New Eng- 
land to gratify a time-honored custom, but does it pay? 
In a few years where is all the paper stock to come from? 
There was enough fibre in one of those fir trees to make a 
whole Boston Sunday paper, with a Bingville supplement, 
containing forty 'leven pages, and here it was being wasted 
to hang Christmas presents on. "When I thought of what 
future generations would do for Boston Sunday papers, 
it unnerved me, and I went in and took a drink — of ice- 
water. 

When I got to Rochester, Jerry's train was standing right 
where it was last summer when I was there, and Jerry stood 
by the steps explaining to a red-headed woman from Happy 
Valley when the 11.30 train would leave, so I did not butt 
in on the conversation, but squirmed into the smoking car. 
I carry a corkscrew for the purpose; it's the only way I 
know of, as it's always jam full. Through the thick clouds 
of tobacco smoke I saw a seat half-way down the car, and 




INIOX STATION. U()('lll>l l.l; N. II- 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 81 

with me, to see a thing like that on Jerry Goodwin's train 
is to appropriate it. There was a drummer saw it a trifle 
later than I did; at any rate I slid into it first, and he 
landed second. As he got up out of my lap and glared at 
me, he hissed with biting sarcasm, "You're no lady!" I 
didn't dispute him, but passed the matter off with a light 
remark about being "onto my job." The fact is, you have 
to be if you get a seat in the smoker on Jerry's train. 

Up at Wolfeboro, where I've been reconnoitering this 
week, "Uncle Gust" Fullerton was telling me about an old- 
timer who lived on the Cemetery hill, towards Mirror Lake, 
named Ben Tibbetts. He lived, I think, where Blake 
Home now lives, and had a son whom he wanted to give a 
good education, a thing he had been deprived of himself. 
After a while the boy arrived at that period in the acquisi- 
tion of knowledge which comes to many of us sooner or 
later, when he discovered that his pa "never et a goger- 
phy or sw^allowed a 'rithmetic. ' ' He w^as mortified beyond 
measure to find that his dad had been farming on the theory 
that the earth was flat, and in spite of his efforts to con- 
vince him, he refused to believe that the globe on which we 
lived whirled round from west to east once every twenty- 
four hours, unavoidable delays excepted. And the old 
man's disgust was plainly evident when he told a neigh- 
bor that "if that air boy goes to school much longer he'll 
be a natural born fool! " All of which shows the danger of 
too much education interfering with filial relations. 

As I faced the northwester that blew on the "Broads," 
across the Wolfeboro hills, I got a little gay with the poetic 
deity unbeknown to him, no doubt, with the following sad 
result : 

Oh, where are all those moonlight larks 

The boarders took last summer, 

The open-work soeks and peek-a-boos — 

(My, wan't that girl a stunner I) 

The birds are gone with all their songs, 

(Oh, lovely were those peaches!) 

The time for fruit is when it's ripe, — 

That's what reflection teaches. 
7 



82 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

IN OSSIPEE. 



A Moral Bach ^Voods Community. — Grover Cleveland's 
Haunts. — How Pine Grows. — Marsfon's Bees and Other 
Bees. 



December 17, 1906. 

When I arrived at Ossipee last week, the "beautiful 
snow," so called, had got there (about a foot) ahead of me, 
but, as I landed with both feet, that made me one foot 
ahead, and during the short and shadowy afternoon I jDlod- 
ded round by the county farm and brought up at Emily 
Goldsmith's, a mile north of the Corner, whose comfortable 
home has sheltered Little Pitchers on several previous oc- 
casions. 

Friend Meloon at the county farm informed me there 
were only three prisoners in the county jail and his "fam- 
ily" is only about seventy, all told. That speaks well for 
both the prosperity and morality of the country we heard 
so much about last year in the Boston papers as being a 
sort of Sodom of lawlessness and riot. It's fortunate for 
some people that liars don't all meet the fate of Ananias, 
and it was rather tough on him that he lived too soon. He 
could make big money writing specials for the daily papers 
if he were only alive now. 

Tuesday I went up by Duncan Lake, where Grover Cleve- 
land has a summer cottage and spends quite a lot of his 
vacation from his insurance duties. Grover says the mos- 
quitoes here will compare favoral)ly with those he is used 
to in New Jersey, and quite a lot of them will weigh a 
pound. If, as I've been informed. Duncan Lake has no 
visible outlet, I should not think its waters in a dry season 
would be very inviting, but Grover has tastes of his own, 
and in his quest for seclusion and the simple life, he has 
shown extreme good sense, while honoring New^ Hampshire 
and Carroll County especially with his kindly presence. 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 83 

They are cutting off the biill pines, white pines, Norway 
pines and everything else that is eutable on Pine River 
phiius, and when I made a flippant remark about seeing the 
finish of the pine industry to an Effingham man this week 
he stated in rebuttal that there were more than ten million 
feet of pine yet in Effingham, and quite a lot of other tim- 
ber. Pine just naturally grows in this region, and all you 
have to do is to forget to cut the grass for a couple of 
years and the little pines shoot up twenty to thirty inches 
in a season. 

J. L. Marston is getting quite a reputation as a bee 
hunter. His regular stunt is in the line of nice juicy 
steaks, veal-ram-lam-sheep and mutton, but he has cap- 
tured five swarms of bees this fall, and several hundred 
pounds of honey. Two swarms he found in the swamps at 
the foot of Green Mountain, one up on the side of the moun- 
tain, one near Lily pond, and one in the partitions of a 
dwelling house in Lynn. I\Ir. jMarston saved one swarm 
and the rest were destroyed. 

It is said that bees are getting numerous over at the 
state capitol as the time for the Legislature to meet and 
elect a U. S. senator draws nigh. We hope some people 
won't get stung, but we fear they will. Political bees are 
elusive creatures. I've been asked so many times what I 
think about politics that I 'm going to set down a few thinks 
here. They don't cost you a cent. 

I think Mr. Floyd will be elected by the Legislature, not 
because he ought to be, but because the party lash will be 
applied, and men who would like right well to "rub in" 
his unpopularity won't dare to. 

I think that Heniy E. Burnham will be re-elected U. S. 
senator, not because he is the fittest for the position, but 
because he is a perfectly safe man for the corporation, and 
they have no reason to tlirow him overboard that I have dis- 
covered. 

I think there will Ix' an anti free i)ass law ]>assed and 



84 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

signed by Mr. Floyd, because the railroads Avant one. It 
will pay them better and appease a popular clamor. 

I think no anti-railroad law will be passed; that the 
work of the Lincoln Republican Club has fizzled out ; that 
Putney and the corporation crowd are in full control of 
New Hampshire, and will be until men with more sand 
than The Lincoln Club undertake the house-cleaning. 
Speaking of railroad domination, a gentleman I met a few 
days ago told me that a friend of his was in Lucius Tuttle 's 
office in Boston while the convention in Concord was wrest- 
ling with the choice of a Republican candidate for gover- 
nor, and overheard a verbal order to a lieutenant on the 
ground, "to nominate Floyd, cost what it may." Of course 
with such platform as that manufactured by the Republi- 
can phrase butchers strictly "to get in on" and nothing 
else, Floyd was the logical candidate. They can use him 
in their business ! How much it cost to cause Pillsbury to 
fly to the support of his old friend and schoolmate (Put- 
ney's man, Floyd) and call off the bold bluff of Churchill 
and the Lincoln Republicans can never be known, as it will 
never have place in the archives of campaign expenses. 



IN MADISON, 



Christmas. — C. 0. Knox's Experience. — The Elder at the 
"Corner." — Jim Durgy's Farm. — Friend Gihnan's Ejn- 
sodes. 



Silver Lake, N. H., December'25. 1906. 
The observant citizen will notice when his eagle eye hits 
the top of this column that Christmas is here. Some people 
don't notice anything about this joyous festival but the 
gradual elongation of the leg, which takes place about this 
time of the year, as the almanacs say ; but this lengthening 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 85 

process isn't fatal, thank Heaven, and after it is all over 
we may go forth with a light heart and a lighter pocket- 
book to face the stern realities of life, conscious of a wad 
well spent. 

Charles 0. Knox, who lives on a slight elevation over to- 
wards Hedgehog Mountain, at "Six Mile Pond," and works 
on the railroad section, was just about to retire at 7 p. m. 
last IMonday evening when he was aroused by something 
crushing through the crusted snow back of his house, and 
looking out of his back window saw a large dark object 
moving around the end of the house towards the "port 
cullis" (see dictionary). He got there first, however, pre- 
pared for bear or wildcat, or whatever it might be. Well, 
friends, it might be either one of them, but it was not; it 
was Little Pitchers, somewhat winded, but still in the ring. 
The track we made looked like "Bill Hepburn's" fresh 
from the county seat (see Bingville Bugle), but I'll swear 
Little Pitchers hadn't taken a thing except a few subscrib- 
ers, and he had a thirst on him something awful, and 
hungry enough to eat a leather pie. I\Ir. Knox, who is 
eighty years young and growing younger faster than we 
are, took us in, and while he told us stories of his cooking 
experiences at Alton Bay campmeetings, twenty years ago, 
]\Iiss Ella, his comely housekeeper, completed the arrange- 
ments for filling a long felt want in Little Pitchers. ]\Ir. 
Knox used to wrestle nine hundred (900) pounds of meat 
per day, a barrel of potatoes, and beets, turnips, carrots, 
parsnips, cabbage, etc., etc., for the edification of the in- 
ner man. He wasn't much on the super man; the parsons 
attended to that, but when it came right down where we 
do business," he was evidently ' ' Johnnie on the spot ' ' with 
the goods, and we'll bet a doughnut against a transcenden- 
tal continental that he saved more souls and did more 
good than all the elders on the grand stand. The way to 
reach a sinner's heart is through his stomach, and when it 
comes to that, a hungry man is like one that hath no music 
in his soul — fit for treasons, strategems and desperate 



86 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

deeds. Don't mistake us, dear readers; this world would 
be a dreary waste without our elders, who are onto their 
jobs, as most of them are; but w^e firmly believe that when 
the Kingdom of Heaven is set upon this earth, where it 
rightly belongs (see Lord's prayer), its foundations w^ill be 
laid broad and deep in full stomachs and physical and ma- 
terial prosperit3^ If you doubt this, that's your privilege, 
but our guess is as good as yours for a while yet. 

"When we struck the parsonage at Madison Corner, we 
were about to rap in a subdued manner on the outer door, 
when a hair-raising sound, as of mortal agony, came from 
the wood shed ; then there was another, bimeby there was 
some more, and the noise of a desperate struggle. We 
must act and act quickly. In a time like this a brave man 
will not hesitate. Clinching our teeth firmly, we cautiously 
stepped down off the veranda and started for Doctor ]Mar- 
tin's, but e'er w^e reached the doctor's we met the elder's 
wife coming from the post-office, totally unconscious of 
w^hat was happening in their happy home. We. in a few 
brief sentences, explained our idea that "murder most 
fowl" was being done in that woodshed, and for goodness 
sake for her to hurry home at once. But she merely re- 
marked: "0 fudge, he's only killing a hen!" 

JIM DURGEY'S FARM. 

Jim Diirgey lived on a sightly hill, 

Where the mountains lined the sky. 
He toiled in his fields for many a year, 

And he put a snug nest egg by. 

He chopped in his woods in the winter time. 

And he logged all his timber down. 
He figured and saved each dollar and dime, 

And at last he moved into town. 

But he never once thought of those matchless hills 

Among which his life work laid. 
Nor caught the grand thought with which God fills 

The land that His centuries made. 




THK Sl'LKNDOR OF MORNINOS ON MOUNTAIN ToTS. 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 87 

The spleutlor of mornings on mountain tops 

To Jim Durgey liad never a charm, 
And sunsets rare when night's curtain drops 

Were no use to him on his farm. 

But a man who grubbed in the noisy town 

And wearied his soul in its niurlv, 
Came out and bought Jim Durgey's farm, 

As a place to rest from his work. 

P. S. This last fellow is supposed to have seen more 
beauty in the landscape lying around loose over on the 
Lead Mine Road than Jim did, but our gasoline engine 
went back on us before we could saw off any more verses, 
and Brother Dorr has got to have this early, so we'll let 
the reader imagine the rest. 

Our friend, Oilman, at Center Ossipee, told us about two 
matrimonial episodes that he said happened in Ossipee. 
One couple being duly hitched, the grateful swain in- 
quired Avhat the bill amounted to. "Well," said the elder, 
as he mentally wondered whether the fellow figured on the 
basis of a sure thing or a gold brick, "the law allows me one 
dollar, but you can pay me what it's worth." "Oh!" 
saj'S the thrifty benedict, "I didn't know that. Well, if 
the law allows you a dollar, parson, I'll gin ye fifty cents 
more an' that'll make it a dollar an' a half, b'gosh, an' it's 
worth it, ain't it, Sally?" 

"How much, parson?" asked the man in the case, in 
episode number two, after the indissoluble bonds had been 
fitted with neatness and dispatch to the willing necks of 
the happy pair. The parson with becoming diffidence de- 
clining to fix a price in so sacred a matter, the man in the 
case (an expert fisherman) helped him out thus: "Well, 
parson, this 'ere is sunthin we don't do every day an' I 
shall always feel obliged to ye an' so will ]\[ary. TIow 
would a nice mess 'er suckers strike ye'" 

We think they probably struck where I wear my tlap- 
jacks — right in the stomach. 

]\rr. Oilman once had a neighl)or. ])ut nnieli to his sor- 



bo WAYSIDE NOTES. 

row, he has moved away, after the death of his lamented 
wife, down into Maine. Before his departure, however, 
he held an auction and sold off all his household goods, 
tools and farm — except a timber lot, which around here is 
worth more than money in the bank — and among other 
things a picture of his wife went under the hammer, so 
we are told, as its possession made the poor man feel bad. 
Once Mr. Oilman called on his neighbor, as neighbors do 
in the country sometimes, and requested the loan of his log- 
ging sleds, as he was having some new ones made and 
couldn't Avait for them. His neighbor was away at the 
time and his wife loaned the sleds. When Mr. Oilman's 
own sleds were done, he took home the borrowed ones in 
complete order, but was met with the assertion that he 
had stolen them, and nothing less than $10 (which was more 
than they were worth) would settle. Mr. Oilman being a 
peaceable man, offered to swap his new sleds for the old 
ones, which was finally agreed to, but when his hired man 
went down and brought the sleds home they were minus 
the clevis which belonged to them, all of which shows that 
all the mean cusses don't live in the city after all. 



MILTON THREE PONDS AND UP ALONG. 



The Ice Crop. — "That you, George f" — Snowshoeing. — 
Lumbermen Bampant. — Mr. Sylvester White's Ohserva- 
tions of the Hedgehog. 



December 31, 1906. 
The Carroll County ice crop is being harvested and it's 
a good one. Ice will be so cheap another summer that it 
will be within reach of all. Even in Khode Island and 
Connecticut they are cutting a fair quality of ice, and it 
is stated that Rockefeller has an ice (a nice) pond on his 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 89 

preserves in New Jersey on which he can be seen skating 
M'ith great sang froid (see dictionary) while his bank ac- 
count increases at the rate of three dollars a second. When- 
ever he sits down unexpected^ on the ice it is said to leave 
a clearly defined dollar sign on the surface — everything 
some people touch seems to turn to money. We were de- 
scending the steps of a house at Milton Three Ponds one 
time and our feet slipped out from under us, while our 
brown leather bag flew wildly aloft; we didn't strike on 
our stern end either, we struck on our stomach and the 
result was a couple of "owes" instead of a dollar mark. 

As we turned down the dark lane that leads to the Widow 
Moore's, near Black Man's mill, after dark last Wednesday 
evening, a couple of ladies passed along the main road, 
and descrying a dark object (which was we), called out in 
a friendly way: "That you, George?" Now George was 
the widow's son, and of course we denied the charge, 
promptly adding that we were Little Pitchers, and the 
quick chorus of "Oh yes, we know you!" convinced us 
that Little Pitchers is certainly well, if not favorably, 
known in daylight or dark in this county where our busi- 
ness has taken us the last ten years. 

More than the usual number of snowshoers are attracted 
to the mountains this winter on account of the deep snows 
and prospects now of a "real old-fashioned winter." But 
we are thankful that we get exercise enough without being 
obliged to tie a couple of great snowshoe rafts onto our 
feet and punch irregular holes in the snow over the white 
and drift-covered landscape. We will give a reward of 
fifty cents to any person who can show us where the fun 
comes in. 

The lumbermen are around the mountains up here and 
over in Pemigewasset valley and up north of the Presiden- 
tial and Franconia ranges of mountains, frantically work- 
ing into the remaining fringe of timber, trying to get the 
last of it ])efore the government steps in and makes a na- 
tional reservation out of the ghastly remains. They re- 



90 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

mind us of the worms that attack an unburied carcass, and 
there'll be about as much left when they finish. 

The fourteen miles of new railway from Conway up 
Swift River will land millions of feet of lumber on the 
line leading to Portsmouth and the immense pulp mill lo- 
cated there, and with the large plant of Kennett & Lord 
up near Passaconway Mountain turning out five million 
feet this winter, work is going to be plenty and help scarce. 

"We offered our services the other day as a cookie (cook's 
helper) in one of the camps, but the boss, after critically 
surveying our front elevation, allowed we would help the 
cook too much and passed us on. We ain't to blame if we 
are forty-six inches round the waist and still growing. One 
of our respected parents ate a good while and the other ate 
a good deal, and we happened to take after them both, 
which accounts for our undoubted capacity as a gastro- 
nomic artist. 

Sylvester "White of Gossville, N. H., who is stopping at 
Newman Drew's, under the shadow of one of the Ossipee 
group of mountains, and on the banks of the Bear Camp 
River, believes religiously in white hedgehogs. "We've heard 
of white blackbirds and they are very scarce, but now we 
are asked to believe that white hedgehogs exist. To prove 
this proposition Mr. "White produced a tobacco box full 
of white hedgehog hair and quills, which came from a se- 
cluded part of the mountain, where a fox and hedgehog 
had participated in a banquet. Mr. "White had what was 
left of that hedgehog after the festivities were over. It 
now remains for some enterprising observer to produce a 
live white hedgehog before some darn fox has used him in 
his business. 




CHoroRTA KHOM CHOCOHIA LAKK. 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 91 

CHOCORUA AND THE BEAR CAMP. 



An Educated Bird Dog. — Emotional Insanity in a Hen. — 
Elias French's Pipe. 



Up near Chocorua lives a youngster who is quite a sports- 
man, and hence is fond of our foor-footed friend, the dog. 
He had one a few weeks ago. It was a nice little fellow. 
I think it was a bird dog; not the kind that scares the 
scant wits out of the denizens of the henyard,. and chews up 
a chicken or two just for exercise, nor the kind that scares 
all the birds out of the woods before you get a shot at 
one. He was a good dog and he minded his own business, 
which is unusual in dogs and some men, until one unlucky 
day, down at West Ossipee, I think it was, amid the bustle 
and confiTsion incident to the departure of the mail train 
south, he got separated from his master. Time went by on 
its regular schedule for a week or two and one day our dog 
fancier heard that a doctor in a neighboring town had 
found and was training a bird dog. Filled with hope the 
boy sent a letter to the gentleman, describing his dog and 
asking for information as to the dog he had acquired, and 
if it proved to be his would he kindly send it home. Some 
time elapsed and then the kind gentleman replied : Yes, 
he had the dog ; there was no doubt of that. Furthermore, 
he proposed to keep said dog unless .$35 for professional 
services training said dog was to him in hand paid. This 
is very interesting if it is good law, but of course, to a lay- 
man, or the man in the road, it looks a good deal like con- 
fiscation. They say that possession is nine points of the 
law, but it is not generally understood to be the whole 
thing, and interested parties up in Chocorua are anxiously 
awaiting the outcome. 

When I came down the pike to the Bear Camp River 
bridge at the base of the Os.sipee, near ]\Ir. Hobbs', I was 



92 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

surprised and shocked at the unseemly conduct of a hen. 
Now a hen is usually considered as mild-mannered as a 
sucking dove, so to speak. She is modest and unassum- 
ing, goes about her business with very little fuss and 
feathers (compared to a peacock) and one would 
scarcely realize the mighty responsibilities devolving upon 
her as the producer of all the hen fruit on the market. Her 
product cannot be adulterated. Upon every one of her 
billion eggs is stamped the undeniable impress of her 
genius. Sometimes man, the base tieceiver, will mark up 
the date of her vintage a couple of weeks or so to make 
them strictly fresh, but that isn't her fault. By and large 
she is the most honest thing that travels upon two legs, 
and the most calm and serene of the barnyard popula- 
tion. Furthermore the hen is the first to attract the at- 
tention of the budding farmer. Notice the young mill 
operative or fair-cheeked clerk who has got the fever for 
raising chickens, who is hopelessly balled up with the call 
of the farm out in the country. He buys a copy of the New 
England Homestead or recklessly subscribes for the Farm 
and Borne, and in forty-eight hours he has absorbed a lot 
of roseate views on "Money in Hens," and his fortune is 
made. He throws up his job, borrows a few hundred dol- 
lars and moves on the Sandy Hollow Road with seventeen 
brown leghorns, eleven black minorcas and a couple of full- 
blooded roosters, ready to acquire tan, freckles, hen lice 
and yards of experience. If he finds any money in hens 
he's a lucky man. I've found more in the ash barrel. 
But something was undeniably in this hen I speak of. She 
cocked her head on one side, and as I cahie rapidly down 
on her, she charged at me. I am not naturally timid. I've 
faced all the dogs this side of Hill, N. H., and been as- 
saulted by turkey gobblers with flapping red ringuses 
hanging down over their threatening beaks. Hissing, long- 
necked geese have put on their most forbidding aspect and 
disputed my passage, but never before did the common do- 
mestic hen of commerce attempt to block my way. I hesi- 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 93 

tated. The report that I retreated is a base fabrication. 
That hen just literally flew right into my face and of all the 
unearthly squawks I ever heard that hen let loose. I side 
stepped and she settled down in her former position, as- 
suming a dignified attitude. Sylvester White, who saw 
her afterwards, said he thought she appeared to have lost 
her head. I think he referred to her getting it in the 
neck, but while I am not an expert, I think it was a case of 
emotional insanity. It shows that hens, like some people, 
should stick to tl>e position they are fitted for and not get 
too far from their own quiet roost. 

Elias French of East Madison has never figured in my 
notes before as far as I remember, but he showed me a pipe 
the other day when I stopped there that he asserted had a 
history. It's all right, of course, for some things to have 
a history, and not for others — grass widows for instance. 
There is a date on the stem, Avhich is about a foot long, 
and according to that the pipe is 112 years old. Mr. French 
takes a smoke with this pipe at stated intervals and handles 
it with great care. It was made at St. Ono, or St. Ino, or 
St. Uno in France, and if I really knew it was that old, I 
"dono" but I'd smoke a mild charge of sweet brier in it 
myself and dream of the musty past w^hen only the nobil- 
ity smoked those ancient T. D's, and before the common 
herd caught on to it and compelled the nobility to go to 
smoking cigars. Mr. French also has a Winchester 44-40 
gun with which he shot a 300-pound deer not long ago that 
had ten points on his moose-like horns. He is believed 
to have been a cross breed and certainly the largest shot 
in this section in vears. 



94 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

PREDICTIONS— WHEN YOU ARE SURE. 



Verified and Unverified Prophecies. — Tlie "Best" Side and 
the Other Side. — A Dog with a Specialtij. — When the 
Paper Man Comes. 



January 14, 1907. 
We take pleasure in announcing that our predictions of 
a few weeks ago regardinu- the governorship, the senator- 
ship and the complete dtiiiiinntion of our state affairs by the 
Boston & Maine Railroad were fully verified. There is 
nothing like predicting what you are sure of. Now we 
want to predict some more. It will take a little longer to 
realize it, but it is just as sure. The time is coming when, 
instead of the public service corporations controlling the 
nation as they do today, the nation will control the public 
service corporations, but — the nation never will control 
them without owning them, Mr. Ruzvelt, Mr. Bryan, or 
any one else to the contrary notwithstanding. For the 
nation to ''regulate" a gigantic trust or system of trusts 
that it does not own is an absurdity, an irridescent dream, 
and the fakirs who tell us it can be done are merely tempo- 
rizing. They know better. The people don't know any 
better now, but by and by they will. Experience is a dear 
teacher, but a thorough one, and ten years from now ]\Ir. 
Bryan's modest proposal that the nation take over the 
"trunk lines" of railroad will look like the height of con- 
servatism. In fact, from being a radical of the radicals ten 
years ago, Mr. Bryan has now become, aside from Ruz- 
velt, about the only hope of the Wall Street gang for stem- 
ming the rising tide in favor of public ownership of the 
public utilities which constitute the machinery of our mod- 
ern civilization. Old things, old ideas, old methods are 
passing, and a severe jolt, like that anticipated by Rocke- 
feller, Stuyvesant Fish and other able men today, wherein 
our alleged prosperity has its mask torn off and stands re- 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 95 

vealed in all its ghastliness with hard times, panic, millions 
out of employment, soup kitchens and destitution ; condi- 
tions likely to develop at any time under private, selfish 
and irresponsible conduct of the people's affairs by the 
great trusts, will precipitate the development of a sentiment 
that no power can stay in favor of public, responsible con- 
trol and ownership of the means of production and distri- 
bution, — exactly what is I^eing advocated today by a half 
million voting Socialists in this country, and millions more 
who advocate it without knowing that it is Socialism. So 
much for that. 

We were up around the Ossipees last week and found that 
some exceptions were being taken to our statement that 
the fact that only three inmates of the county jail spoke 
well fiir the morality of Carroll County. They are saying 
that there are plenty of enterprising burglars, thieves and 
firebugs that ought to be in jail, and the county jail would 
have to be enlarged if they were all accommodated. Now 
don't charge this to Little Pitchers; we are not to blame 
for the statement. We like to see the best side always. 

Up at Tuftonborough Corner we were entertained over 
night at the home of our old friend, H. F. Hodgdon, Avell 
known as an expert hunter. He has been boarding a hound 
known as Hunter, that has a record of twenty-six wood- 
chucks in one season, and in the -twelve years of his can- 
ine existence no less than 200 killed. He makes a specialty 
of Avoodchucks and we admire his taste. Now some fool 
dogs will go and tackle one of those animated pin cushions 
the state has paid a bounty on for several years and get into 
a condition no self-respecting dog would like to be found in, 
with a rich lot of souvenir hedgehog quills adorning their 
mugs, that look worse than the dog muzzles made and pro- 
vided for them l)y the authorities down in ^Massachusetts. 
Others will interfere with disastrous effect with those lit- 
tle black and white animals we always give a wide I'terth to, 
owing to tlieir i)ungent od(u*. When we run across a really 
wise dog like Hunter, we take off our hat to him. He chews 



96 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

woodehucks, that 's good ; he eschews skunks and that 's bet- 
ter; a good deal better for him and all concerned. There 
are other dogs that haven't read up on our wonderful 
game laws, that don't know any better than to chase deer 
and kill sheep. Under good management, however, you 
can make about anything you want out of a dog. Mr. 
Hodgdon has four at the present time that are to be trained 
for fox hounds. He stated that no less than seventeen 
foxes have been started from points within a mile of his 
house that have been captured the past fall. 

Many times when we call at a house where there are 
children, a little scene is enacted that calls up the following 
versified reminiscence : 



WHEN THE PAPER MAN COMES. 

Little Johuny Yellow Locks 

Hides behind the range 
When he sees the Paper Man, 

Face so fat and strange. 

Little Johnny Yellow Locks, 

'Fraid as he can be, 
Thinks " 'praps that big, old Paper Man 

Will make a grab for me!" 

Don't he know the Paper Man 
Won't hurt little boys? 
Don't mind him when he comes again, 
But keep on with your toys. 

For well the big, old Paper Man 
Harks back to days when he 

In terror from a peddler ran. 
And "shinned up" in a tree. 

And from its branches down he fell. 

Beside the pasture bars, 
Struck square upon his head and saw 

Forty million stars. 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 97 

THE WINCHESTER. 

[The following is the story of a Winchester, 44-40, old-style 
rifle, presented to Ellas G. French, East Freedom, N. H.. by Joseph 
Connor, of Kezar Falls, Me., 1904.1 



Looking for a gun, Elias? 

Well, here's the thing for you, 
'Tis all a hunter's heart desires. 

With aim both far and true. 

I've carried it in wild and war, 

I've tested it of old, 
And never did its black throat roar 

But that its dead shot told! 

When Two Chief Boar, the redskin, 
Hung hard on Custer's flank. 

'Twas this black throated Winchester 
The iiale face blood that drank! 

Oh! those were scenes of carnage, boy. 
Where this gun bore its part — 

Wild was the fray and fierce the joy 
In Tw^o Chief Boar's black heart. 

One day, long after. Two Chief Floar 
Approached me on the street, 

The "murder gun" upon his arm. 
Soft moccasined his feet. 

Attracted by the yellow gleam 
Of the cuff studs that I wore, 

The savage bantered me to trade 
For half an hour or more. 

I cared not for his paltry pelf, — 
The gun it was that took my eye; 

And many a waiTior since that day 
Has seen it but to die! 

For I was with bold General Miles 
When he trailed down Sitting Bull— 

If war is Hell, this Winchester 
Has dealt it out in full! 



98 WAYSIDE NOTES. 



And when it speaks, the aiitlered deer 
Goes down before its flame. 

A liuudred yards away the fox 
Shall prove your certain game ! 

And when in competition with 
The crackest on the plains, 

Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack— 
My boy, you know their names. 

Its black throat never yet has spoke 
But that its aim was true. 

A servant, faithful, it has proved 
To me and will to you! 

So handle it with care, boy, 

For it must needs obey. 
'Tis yours to will for good or ill. 

It speaks as you shall say! 

But never more, I hope, boy, 

Shall it seek human gore. 
Men have no use for "murder guns," 

And war must rage no more! 



OLD MAN FINN. 



He Takes a Trip ^Yest and Is Reminded of Old Times. 



February 1, 1907. 

Old Man Finn had just returned from South Dakota and 
was fairly bubbling over with the subject, when I had the 
pleasure of stopping at his place, not far from Goshen Cen- 
ter, the first of last week. 

"Why," he said, "my cousin, Eph, an' his son, Ike, went 
out there thirty years ago an' took up quarter sections, 
160 acres apiece, government land, an' the railroad came 
right in there, an ' afore they know 'd it the city had grow 'd 
right up round them. Eph an' Ike are wealthy men ter- 
day,— yes, sir, wealthy. Ike owns two grain elevators an' 
Eph owns three, an' houses an' lots, an' a business block 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 99 

in Webster, an' pilin' np the money hand over fist. But, 
Mister, they do waste a pile 'er good material out there, 
thousands er bushels er flax they raise there an' most all the 
straw goes to waste. Last year, Eph raised 4,000 bushek- 
of wheat, he did, an ' they burnt the straw, every spear on 't, 
and the corn they raise, — w'y, it's the greatest com coun- 
try I ever see, stalks average ten feet high, two an' throe 
ears on a stalk, and most all the fodder rots in the field. 
Some on um take a rail of railroad iron an 'hitch horses 
on each end an' drag it over the field when the ground is 
frozen an' that breaks the stalks all down so's they can 
plow it in the spring. Say, if I had a couple 'er thousand 
dollars, know w^iat I'd do? By Mighty I'd go right out 
to Chicago an' put it inter machinery fer makin' linen 
from that flax that's goin' ter waste, by JMighty I would. 
There's millions in it an' they can raise it an' deliver it fer 
two dollare a ton, an' glad to at that. I had (piite a talk 
with Eph about this an' he says the farmers out there are 
jest awaitin' fer some one ter come along an' start the 
thing." 

I broke in at this point and shouted into Mr. Finn's off 
ear (he is very deaf) that I wondered some of those ex- 
Yankees from Carroll County hadn't started a linen mill 
before now to use up the surplus fiax. ]\Ir. Finn grunted 
and said that he had an uncle that was, so I knew he heard 
me. 

"I tell ye what," continued Mr. Finn, "seein' them cous- 
ins 'er mine out there put me in mind of the old times 
when we used ter go ter school together right here in Con- 
way. My, but wa'nt them the times! We had one teacher 
that came from Dartmouth College, an ' we throw 'd 'im out 
the first day after he tackled the job. He had a set er rules 
that he laid down ter us big boys as long as yer arm, an' I 
hain't no doul)t they were good ones too, but we was full 
er ginger an' didn't take to 'em no great, an' when the 
gentleman got oxcited an' offered to lick us big boys (I 
was just turned eighteen then) collectively and individ- 



100 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

ually, we just naturally made a rush fei* 'im an' before he 
knew where he was he had passed out through the winder, 
sash an' all, an' was stickin' meditatively in a snow bank. 
The next teacher we had was from Brownfield, an' we got 
along with him slick enough after we'd got acquainted, as 
ye might say. I 'member one night after school the teacher 
got ter wrestlin' with the big boys after I'd started for 
home. My little brother came er iimnin' up an' he says, all 
out er breath, 'Hi, teacher's wrestlin' all the big boys down 
an' he says he c'n wrestle any boy in school, he don't care 
who 'tis.' I jest turned round an' marched back as quick 
as I could, fer I was acliin' ter get a holt on him, an' when 
I come up ter the schoolhouse yard he'd just throw 'd Ed 
Snow, an' Tom Perkins was rubbin' his shin, an' the teacher 
was wavin' his fists an' spittin' on his hands an' spattiu' 
them together an' callin' on anyone to 'walk up, tumble 
up, any way ter get up; here's where ye get yer money's 
Avorth, and satisfaction guaranteed. ' I walked right up be- 
fore he gin out a second invitation, an' he says kinder tan- 
talizin', 'Mr. Finn, take your choice of holts an' it'll be a 
wrastle,' says he, 'to a finish,' and he w^inked to the rest 
of the boys. I says 'Back holt,' and he says, 'Are ye 
ready?' I said, 'Ready!' an' before he know'd it, I'd 
tripped him up an' throw 'd him just as flat on his back as 
he could lay. He was kinder dazed fer a minute, but soon's 
he got his breath back he said he wasn't satisfied an' he 
got up and we clinched again, and he said, ' Are you ready ? ' 
An' I said. 'Ready!' He tried the same old hip lock that 
he'd started to try before an' I countered him an' tripped 
him with my left foot an' throw 'd him jest the same as I 
had before, only this time I throw 'd him about ten feet 
over the bankin' an' into a big snowdrift. Well, he 
crawled out after he got his wind an' didn't ask for no 
more, an' I asked him if he was satisfied an' he said he 
was, so we all went home. Well, that night at the supper 
table my brothers was a tellin' pa how I'd throw 'd the 
teacher an' he laughed an' said it 'minded him er when 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 101 

he was a boy an' how he bantered gran'ser ter wrastle with 
him an' they took hold, back holts, an' he throw 'd gran'ser, 
an' then pa got np from the table an' he danced a jig on 
the kitchen floor an ' he sang : 

Hoity toity, wlioops to dee. 
I'm ju8t as young as I used to be. 
If yi>u wimt anything of nie, 
Hoity toity, whoop.s te dee. 

"An' then he spit on his hand an' whooped an' said he 
hadn't got a son that could lay him on his back, an' if 
they thought they could to come right along an' he'd give 
'em the worth of their money. 

"I says, 'Pa, I'd like mighty well ter wrastle with you, 
but if I throw you, you won't be mad ter me will ye?' 
An' he says, 'Hi, if you lay me on my back I'll gin ye that 
Jersey heifer you think so much of, an' I ain't thinkin' 
er partin' with it neither, very much; now come on, son, 
put up or shut up.' An' what could I do? I wan't sure 
I c'd down pa, but there, he'd dared me to it, as ye might 
say, an' so we took back holts and ma she shoved the table 
an ' chairs back an ' we had it out right there in the kitchen. 
At fir.st I watched him ter see what he was trying ter do, 
an' we circled round the room once er twice, an' twice he 
tried ter ketch me off my guard with a hip lock, and pa was 
no slouch of a wrastler, either, but Lord, he couldn't throw 
me over mor'n a stone post, and pretty soon I throw 'd out 
my left foot good an' strong an' hit him on the ankle an' 
at the same time fetched a quick jerk that landed pa flat 
on his back. He laid there a second er two, stunded, but 
up he gets an' says he ain't got enough, an' so we had it 
all over again; the second time he went down I landed 
on his stomach an' it knocked the breath clean out er his 
body, but as soon as he got it back he said that was good 
an' plenty, an' for me to help him up. 

"Well, I helped pa up and ma she got the campher bot- 
tle, an' she 'lowed it served pa right if he didn't know any 
more than ter get ter wrestlin with ])(iys at his time er life. 



102 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

an' I seen it didn't set well on pa gettin' throw 'd twice, but 
he gin me the calf jest as he said he would, an' ma says 
ter me one day afterwards kinder confidential, 'Yer pa 
'lows 3'ou won't mind him no more now ye know ye can 
handle him.' An' I says, 'Now, ma, you tell pa if he ever 
mentions that again, that I shall always be just the same to 
him as ever, an' I wouldn't a done it, only he dared me.' 
Ma patted me on the shoulder an ' said she knew it and that 
settled that. 

"Yes," continued Mr. Finn meditatively, as he aimed 
at the open grate and spit on the stove hearth, "I c'd 
wrastle in those days,' an' by Mighty, I ain't seen anyone 
c'd lay me on my back yet," and as Little Pitchers had not 
observed anyone of that description lurking in the vicinity, 
we made it unanimous. 



THAW. 

There's a horde of lurking devils 

In the jungles of the land, 
Watching tenselj^ for the outcome 

Of the tri.'il now in hand. 

And a carnival of murder 

Swift to follow there will be, 

If a smirched, bribe-tainted justice 
Shall set the murderer free! 

His mute victim lies dishonored. 
Struck down by "unwritten law." 

Hail! all Hail! Assassination! 
And glorify assassin Thaw! 

No! "Eye for eye and tooth for tooth!' 
Must give way some time, I trow, 
To the law of love and truth, — 
Then why not invoke it nowV 

Who murders hath the brand of Cain! 

The same brand on man or state. 
Then spare the life of one insane 

And let the asylum be his fate! 



WAYSIDE NOTES. lOH 

GET YOUR GUN. 



01(1 fogies used to tell us 

Our defender was the state, 
And to apply to courts of justice 

If we wished to arbitrate! 
But we're finding out in sorrow 
That they were not up to date. 

Get your gun, get your gun! 
Get your gun, gun, gun! 

When you feel a hunch of anger. 

Or a brain storm coming on, 
Don't wait till it blows over 

Or your best chance will be gone; 
While it lasts no one can touch you, 
Hustle till the deed is done. 

Get your gun, get your gun! 
Get .vour gun, gnu. gun ! 

Then the judge will charge the jury 

How the statutes aren't complete. 
And you bravely added to them. 

Though it were a desperate feat; 
How the law that's not been written 
Has our statutes surely beat! 

Get your gun, get your gun! 
Get your gun, gun, gun! 



SANDY THE TRAMP. 



He Plays Dan Cupid with Good Svccess. — A Story of Ac- 
tual Occurrence. 



John Ladcl, road agent and tramp officer of Epping, was 
up against it. A lot of gutters to be cleaned out and no 
available help. Four able-bodied hobos in the tramp house 
for the night also claimed attention. Happy thought! 



104 • WAYSIDE NOTES. 

Why not set the tramps to work? No sooner said than 
done, and a few days later, the job completed, the tramps 
all but one left town, disgusted and determined to give 
Epping a wide berth in future. Sandy Rhodes had worked 
better than the rest. He was no real tramp and Mr. Ladd 
had got him a place with his father and maiden sister of 
fifty summers, who lived on a farm near by. Here Sandy 
proved an efficient hand and beguiled his evenings telling 
his employers of adventures on the road. Among other 
things he told them, was about a certain Christopher Colum- 
bus Hobbs, of West Ossipee, who had often befriended 
him when in hard luck. Not the least interesting part of 
the story to Miss Ladd was the fact that he was a bachelor 
of about fifty and owned a nice farm in a beautiful valley 
at the foot of the Ossipee JMountains. 

Sandy's one failing was an irresistible appetite for rum, 
and it was not long before, upon the receipt of his month's 
wages, Sandy come up among the missing. The months 
wore away and the infirmities of age began to tell upon the 
elder Mr. Ladd, so that with his daughter he abandoned the 
farm and moved to Raymond village not far away, the 
farm being taken by another son from the city. 

About this time there came a letter to Miss Ladd which 
agreeably surprised her. It was in the bold handwriting 
of Christopher Columbus Hobbs, and it detailed that he had 
paid the fare of Mr. Sandy Rhodes to Epping and would 
like to know if he had arrived all right? And it also 
stated that the writer had heard some very favorable re- 
ports of Miss Ladd from the aforesaid Sandy Rhodes, and 
would like to correspond with her with a view to matri- 
mony, or better still, pay her a visit. Now wouldn't that 
jar you? 

Miss Ladd, whose one aim in life since the death of her 
mother many years before, had been to look after her poor 
old father, had no time for foolish fancies. 

It didn't take long to indite, with some trepidation it 
is true, a not too effusive reply, setting forth that Sandy 



WAYSIDE NOTES. 105 

had not as yet appeared, that things had changed somewh.it. 
that Father Ladd was unlikely to last many weeks. < r 
perhaps days longer, that j\Iiss Ladd should consider her 
first duty to her parent so long as he should need her care, 
but that she too had heard good reports through her tramp 
cupid of the fair (pialities of her correspondent, and would 
not be averse to a correspondence nor to a visit from Mr. 
Hobbs at his convenience. 

The passing of poor Father Ladd, the coming of I\Ir. 
Hobbs and his favorable reception, and wedding bells, and 
a dear, delightful home in Ossipee's fair vale. "We might 
quit here, but just a word more to say, that Sandy Rhodes 
will alwavs be welcome, if he comes sober. 



TO OUR MOTHERS. 



At the close of an address in the old Congregational 
Church at Lyme, N. H., Old Home Day, 1901, the author 
repeated the following original poem : 

Let others tell the tale of wars, 

Tlie chiise. and wild alarms; 
Of meu, who fought iu country's cause. 

Reared on our hillside farms. 
Let others write the records down 

Of Lyme's successful sons; 
Or tell the mournful tales, forsooth, 

Of the lost, forgotten ones. 
IIow many sailed life's troubled seas 

And grasped each tinselled prize. 
Or lived abroad in beds of ease. 

The wicked, weak and wise. 

But as I walk in silent paths, 

Lyme's city of the dead. 
The vision rises in my soul 

Of the lives our mothers led. 



106 WAYSIDE NOTES. 

How tenderly they nursed the sous 

And daughters, brave and fair; 
Heroically their work was done, 

Their lives were lives of care. 
Each day the endless burden came, 

Each day "twas l)ravely borne ; 
The thrice-schooled tongue would not complain 

Although the heart be torn. 

And oft in secret hearts have bled 

While prayer for help ascended, 
And mother-love has conquered fear. 

With God's own love been blended. 
Let others tell the stories o'er 

Of bravery on flood and field, 
But memory forever more 

Unto our mothers true shall yield 
The homage of a part well done, 

A measure full of endless praise 
Not graved on crumbling iilates of stone, 

Rut in our hearts secure always. 

Here's to the mothers of our town, 

"Not dead, l>ut gone before." 
Think on their virtues, friends, and crown 

With love and honor evermore 
The guardians of our earliest years. 

The wise instructors of our youth, 
Who wiped away our childish tears 

And led us in the ways of truth. 
And when we build our watch-fires high. 

And where we raise our shafts of stone. 
We'll paint their records on the sky 

And cause their life work to be known. 



SNYDER'S TWINS. 



We don't forget those happy days 
When Snyder went a-wooiug, 

Dan Cupid held the reins that time, 
And Love had something doing. 










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H 
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C ^ ^ • a; -t^ 0) c5 



,^ i S 5 £333 



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WAYSIDE NOTES. 107 

We (lou't forget the boiieyinouii, 

Or the moous come striuging later ; 
Since Snyder and his other half 

Knew wedded joys far greater. 

But now we sing a larger world, 

A heaven higher and wider, 
That's opened to himself and wife 

Since twins have come to Snyder ! 

Ah, happy boy ! Oh, i)recious girl ! 

Kind Fate, the great divider. 
Bestowed a blessing rich on you 

When she gave you two to Snyder. 



lil 



